To Hesitate
by gelfling
Summary: Aragorn Legolas slash with severe sexual tension, begining from the end of FotR and into Gondor in Return of the King. Some spoilers, lime added. Realistic, non-fluff, introspective. COMPLETE!
1. Aragorn: Elves

Disclaimer: Not mine.  All his.

Warning: Slash, Aragon/Legolas, lots of musing.

To Hesitate

I ask myself what I'm waiting for.

I've never been one to hesitate; once I know what it is I want to accomplish and the best route to proceed in, I do it.  It's the way a king is supposed to act.  Decisive, justly, and accurate.

So why do I hesitate now you ask?  

The reason is quite simple actually, and it's waiting for me in Rivendell.  It would wait for me for eternity, faithful and vigilant and everything I could possibly ask for.  

Do not mistake, I love her still; I'll love her always.  I have entrusted my heart and soul to her, and she to I.  She was the embodiment of all my dreams and hopes, a tiny piece of heaven that I should have never found and she wanted _me_.  For the longest time I thought one of us was either insane or delirious, but time proved me wrong.

Then I found him.

Despite what many might assume, the attraction wasn't instantaneous.

I hadn't wanted him with us, plain and simple.  I would have kept him from coming at all if Elrond had not been present and we had not been in his race's territory.  The quest to destroy the Ring was going to be challenging enough without having a sniveling royal-born elf to baby-sit.  

I have respect for the elves as a race, but they lack a violence and brutality that I have found necessary to live in this world, especially on the road, especially alone.  Outside their forests and castles, I doubted that they would last long.  

Though I possess these qualities, I'm not proud of them, though they have preserved my life.

The remaining members of the party had my approval, even grudgingly the hobbits, though they had no combat skills and could be simple minded and hopeless at times.  I abandoned whatever hope I ever had of making them into self-sufficient travelers on the road; they were doomed to the domestic life, and had no talent for the roughness of the road.  

Yet they were likable creatures in their innocence, and had won my respect with their loyalty and bravery.  Gandalf exceeded my own abilities, and I was relieved to know that we would have someone as wise as he leading us.  The dwarf's brashness and strength would prove extremely useful in a quest such as we would undertake, and Boromir's ambition would keep him from falling too far behind.

But the elf…one tends to rely on their instincts when life is so uncertain that one isn't certain if one will be free and breathing in the next 3 hours.  And my instincts said no. 

Emphatically, absolutely, definitely…no.

He backed down easily when the dwarf challenged him for protection of the ring, and I have no reason to believe that he would back down just as easily in battle, even against the most second-rate opponents.

Clerk.

The carefully combed hair held back from his face, high cheekbones and delicate nose and mouth.  The soft, muted colors of his garb, the way it refracted the light when it undulated the way water does.  The slender pale hands, more apt for inscribing documents or playing a musical instrument than handling a sword or bow.  The gentle, refined warmth in his eyes that spoke of protection from the horrors from the outside world.  

Clerk.

So different from my own eyes and body, with the calluses on every ridge of my hands, the scars that are hidden by the long sleeves of my tunic, the weathered, weary look that my own face constantly projects.  The severe, frosty shine that my own eyes glimmered with.

My form spoke of adulteration, rawness, and a darkness.  The power lust and greed passed on from my fathers to myself, for me to be susceptible to their weaknesses and atone for a crime that I didn't commit.

The elf was everything I wasn't.

Untouched, pure, perfect.  Quite beautiful really.  Very beautiful.  Even in all the natural beauty that Rivendell possessed, he still shone brightly.  Indeed, I did consider him beautiful the way one might regard a landscape or delicate glasswork beautiful.  But that did not imply that I would ever willingly entrust even my boots with him, much less my life.  I would rather walk barefoot and most likely die before make that error in judgment.

Understand, I've never found males attractive, and to this day I still don't.  I've had my fair share of tavern wenches, and always found the opposite sex desirable in a mysterious, fragile way.  In the environment that has molded me, males are to be considered rivals or enemies.  They can be tools though, and comrades as well though…but I'm not much of a people person.

I still found him…somewhat pleasing.

******

And then there's Arwen.  

Not surprisingly, the same qualities that drew me to her are the same that I notice in him.  The divinity, the morality, the perfection that seems to be native to their race.  The selflessness.  

She would give up her immortality for me, be willingly to feel the pain of age and time for our love.  As I now ponder her action and implications by the campfire, I realize in essence that I am her murderer.  If not for me she would live far longer than now that she has met me.  She must realize it, yet she retains her vow.  When I return, we will join, and she shall die.

What she sees in me, what makes her think I am remotely worthy of her sacrifice, I have no idea.  Why the others trust me to lead them now that Gandalf is…has gone, is also a mystery.  Has not my bloodline already proven itself unworthy of leadership or even stable morals already?

It…frightens me some, to know the amount of responsibility that has been laid across my shoulders.

He would be a better leader than I would; I see that now.  I judged him too harshly.  He proved that in the battle in Moria.

He still looks like a clerk and he still acts like a clerk with his manners and elegance, but this clerk can shoot.  And shoot quite accurately.  He saved my life, to my surprise and shame, as well as slayed the troll that we thought had killed the Ring Bearer.  

He proved himself a warrior…and yet still retains the innocence in his eyes that first caught my eye.

How he manages it, I'll never understand.  No human could face the peril he did and kill with the same accuracy he did.  

He has earned my respect, as well my interest.

****

It's my watch now.

I miss Boromir, and his vanity and brazenness.  His trust and friendship that he gave me.  I miss Merry and Pippin, wherever they maybe and I fear for their safety almost every waking moment.

Gimli sleeps curled up under blanket with his back to the fire, the snores audible over the crackling of the wood.  He's worn out from the pace that we have adopted to find Merry and Pippin all the faster, dwarves aren't built for covering ground quickly.  Dwarves are a hardy folk, and he hasn't complained, but his fatigue even outweighs mine.

He's not the one my eyes are on though.

Is it because I miss Arwen?  Have I seen too much death and loss too quickly that it is making me more sentimental?  Has Saruman placed a curse on me and turned me into some unnatural being?  Am I falling…into something I shouldn't?

I am vouching that this is wizardry.  Definitely wizardry.

He sleeps with his eyes open, hands clasped against his chest that's reminiscent of the manner of Boromir's hands were laid, clasping his sword while the river took him.  His eyes are slightly glazed over, like a 3-hour corpse on the battlefield.  

I can't tell if he's sleeping or dead.  

He could be either, or he could be awake, studying the stars and completely aware that I'm gawking at him, and have been every time it's my watch.

At first I thought he was all elegance and warmth and beauty.  I still think that, but now I've noticed a coldness about him, a weariness that comes with living some thousand years.  He is in many ways a clerk and a corpse, child and a murderer.  He is still alien to me, but I think I understand him better than what I once did.  

I want to understand him better.  

I want to look in his eyes and be able to identify every emotion that swims inside them, and commit the exact tones and hues of the fingers of color that make up the retina of his eyes to my memory, and treasure it.  

I want to touch his skin, and feel if it's really as smooth and fine as it appears to be, or rough the way human archers and warriors are.  I know his skin would be cold, as his race demands, but how cold?  Icy as snow?  Cool as summer rain?  Metallic like the blade of a sword, or organic like river water?  I itch to touch him, so badly that my fingers twitch and rub against themselves while the sides of my neck and temples become unnaturally warm.  

It's all I can do not to reach out to brush the hair from his face, he's so close and I doubt he would awake or even notice.  And even if he did I could brush it off easily, and he would not suspect an ulterior motive.  He trusts me that way.  It would be so easy, and so rewarding.  At least then I would not be rubbing my fingers raw at the thought.

Why do I hesitate?

He inhales suddenly, his chest rising with the movement and his eyes widen slightly.  I inhale as well, captured by the slight movement that still displays the grace that he exerts in everything he does.  His lips move slightly, as if he were quietly mumbling, or stretching, but no sound arises.  A slight rise in the chest, miniscule arching of the neck and back, like he were rising toward something beautiful.  Then the moment passes.

I am left in the aftershock of it, breathing heavily and my heart racing at the quiet, innocent act of eroticism that I have just witnessed.  Effortlessly, perfectly, executed and everything I could ever ask for or want.

How would he taste you ask?

I dare not think the thought, for I would not be able to control myself if I did.  I can barely control myself now, for it is no longer my hands that are only shaking but my entire body as well.  My tongue stokes my own lower lip, while I chew gently at the inside of my cheek.  I dare not even imagine the act, though my body refuses to obey me.

Why do I hesitate?

I don't confuse him with Arwen.  I had long hoped that was only what this was, a simple mistake of identity and nothing more.  Nothing worthy of my concern.  

I've thrown that idea out the window and outside the castle walls and straight into the next country.

It's true that they share similar qualities.  It's true that they are of the same race.  It's true that they are both beautiful.  But there the similarities end.

While Arwen would give up her life for me, I am not certain if he would.  While he also holds other's concern close to his heart, he is also concerned with himself.  While there are stories of Elven maidens forsaking their immortality for a mortal love, there has never been one of an Elven male doing the same, much less a prince, and certainly not a warrior.  

I do not think that he would let me hurt him.  He has his own pride and honor, and I doubt he will forsake those easily.  He will someday be a king of his people, and cannot afford to be that kind.  He will need to be strong, to defend his people against the hunger and greed of the world who would wish to have his country as their own.  He will need to fight against the greed in the world, against demons, against humans.  

And, perhaps, against me.

I must someday take the throne, as will he.  Due to our different life spans, I severely doubt that they will be at similar periods.  

However…if we were ever to both be kings at a similar time, and if my country were dying and in need of supplies, I might need to attack another country in order to obtain it.  

Perhaps his.

Perhaps not.

The greed and hunger of Humanity runs deeply in my bloodlines; I will not tempt them.

So it is as much for his own protection as for Arwen's and my own that I stay my hand from even dipping into what-could-be.  I would not be able to stop myself, and would be endangering our friendship and the Fellowship and all of Middle-Earth in the process.  

So I stay my hand.

But that does not stop me from staring.  Nor does it ease the desire I feel in my heart and soul.  Where it simple lust, I think that it should not bother me as much as it does.  Lust I have felt before and have been able to remedy with time, a cold shower, or a few shameful minutes of self-indulgence lost in the woods and in the pleasures of my own hand.  Lust, I know how to deal with.  But what I am experiencing now, this is not it.  It reminds me passingly of what I felt for Arwen at the first turbulent moments in our relationships, but running deeper inside.  

I had no idea I could feel so vast a void inside me and not find a hole running through my body, or even that I could feel a passion so intense outside the battlefield or bedroom.  

An unfounded passion, with little to fuel it save a couple stray touches when passing a water skin or a borrowed knife, yet the feeling will not abide.

I don't understand it.  

It's definitely becoming a problem.  I'm too distracted to even be on guard properly, much less detect the signs that will lead us to Pippin and Merry.  It's making me weak, and needs to be remedied quickly.  One needs to understand a problem before it can be solved.

I don't understand it.

I don't understand him.

I'll stay my hand.  For now.

But this cannot continue.


	2. Legolas: Shadows

The stars shine like the inside lemon's rind tonight.  

They are not the pure diamonds that would normally grace my gaze, nor the misty candles before the annual showers.  I doubt my companions can discern the faint sour yellow that tints them, nor the sickly wan way they shine.

It bodes ill.

Yet most every item on our search warns of such tidings, both of ill and ominous comings.  The way the wind only blows part way, as if too exhausted to finish it's route.  Leaves fall lightly around us, yet the even that familiar event causes my eyes and ears to dart to source, my fingers aching for an arrow in my hands.  

With the constant stress and searching, I am more than certain that an enemy could cut me down effortlessly while my mind scattered to account for more immediate, harmless matters.

Like  accounting for every leaf that falls to the ground within a 15 yard radius of where I am.  How the leaves drift and tilt in the slight current, before landing gently on the ground that sounds akin of paper burning.  

Also, busy remembering the way the fall leaves crush and crunch under dead corpses.  Or the way their descent was altered ever so slightly by Boromir's final breathes.  How Gimli's stumping feet hammered the leaves and ground with the same repetition that I am imagine they use while forging the metal works that declare them so.  

Our cloaks had brushed against the current with restlessness on them.  If we had not waited so long nor dally as we do now to pursue the hobbits then we would have them by now.  Had I been but tracking with my own kinsfolk, the young ones would be safely out of harm and we would be on our journey to destroy the Ring.

But we are not.

Nor am I with my kinsmen, nor near any of them from any kingdom.  The dwarf sleeps heavily across the fire from myself now, while the human keeps watch.  I am alone outside the walls and trees that have long been my home, with a dwarf that trusts me little and likes me not and a human that….

A human that I do not understand.

His manner is one of a mercenary, cold and sure.  He was that way before, when he brought the wretched creature of Gollum to King Thanduril, my father, some years ago.  He had not met me then, but I had watched him from high and afar in the trees, and my impression was that of a mercenary.  For, that was akin to his profession at the time.

But he can be kind at times, as well as compassionate, which is why I think the hobbits trust him as they do.  He is open with them without allowing outside eyes to peer into his heart and mind, as I have tried.  It's as if they have some secret agreement that others may not be privy to.

Of course I have noticed that he avoids me.  

He would not allow me to fight at his back at Moria without casting glances over his shoulders.  He will not meet my eyes when I speak, nor speak in return.  If he must trade words with me they are short and bordering on civil, the bare minimum.  Instead of looking at my face he concentrates on my shoulder or my forehead, close enough to fool an observer but not the speaking nor spoken to.

Arrogance, it is taught, is an inborn human quality.  Humans cannot be condemned or excused from this inherited weakness, it must simply be endured.  

I am finding it increasingly difficult to endure as the days pass, and it takes all the teachings of my father's court to ignore it now.  I am not certain how long I will manage it.

When we camp he always sat or slept farthest from the fire and closest to the hobbits, to be at their aid quickly should they need it.  Now that there are three of us he stays nearest to Gimli, though he does not sleep well with the dwarves constant snoring, as I've noticed during my watches.  Perhaps he knew I was watching him and figuring the puzzle he had placed before me.  He might have.  Perhaps that was why he did sleep not well.

He rarely sleeps well at all, in truth.  I've been following the intervals of his breathing and the rate of his heart beat closely and frequently enough to discern when the human is truly resting or when he is simply lying awake.  During my watches he is often drowsing or lying awake and feigning sleep.  When I observe him under Gimli's watches, however he sleeps full and deeply.

When he stood watch over us, I could feel his eyes scowling at my body while he thought I slept.  He did that often.

At first, I had suspected that he disliked Elves or did not trust us.  Many humans do.  Boromir did for a time, but grew to trust me and I would daresay like me in the time we knew each other.

Yet this Man has no reason to do this.  He was raised among elves, and it is rumored that he has relations with Arwen Evenstar, Elrond's daughter.  It cannot be that he disliked elves as a whole, as the dwarves and other humans are apt to do.

So it had to be something about me that disturbed him.

I do not think that he disliked me, although the signs did suggest it.  Yet if he did not want me as a member of the Fellowship, why conceal it?  He has nothing to fear, and I know from watching him that he would not allow fear to stop him.  If something were troubling, he would say so.  

He leads us well, treats us well, and trusts us well and deeply, save this wall of veiled hostility and coldness between he and I.  He hadn't trusted me in the beginning, but that has changed.  

The wall has not.

He is a brave man, cautious, kind, and honorable, and what stands between he and I forming a bond remains a mystery.  In that aspect, he interests me.  I know the feeling is reciprocated.

…

I am not the only one who has taken to watching the other sleep during the nightly watches to the point of obsession.

What he hopes to learn or gain from watching me sleep, I do not know.  

But he does; intensely, constantly, and a little guiltily.  I first noticed it when the hobbits were still with us, after Gandalf was lost to us.  Then it was only stray, lingering glances on my form, nothing alarming.  I watched the remainder of the Fellowship in the same manner, but felt no guilt from it.  From whence that guilt springs from in his heart I also do not know.  

Immediately after the hobbits departed and we began our search, the observation increased.  Even as we ran, his eyes ran wild from the orc tracks we were following to myself; questioning, quick glances that I felt but could never catch.  The first night we rested, his eyes never left me.  He made his watch longer than either Gimli's or mine.  

Even this day when we searched, today while scouring the track, his eyes still wander to me intermittently.  Only once I was able to catch his eyes wandering on my legs before traveling to my face.  His eyes were open and unguarded, and when we locked I read surprise, anger, and shame in them before he turned his head to the trail in front of us.  

He stumbled as he did so, catching himself before he fell.  He flushed violently before leading us forward.  He didn't look at me for nearly half an hour after that.  

He looks at me now.

I feel that he's searching for an answer in me to a question that he will not voice, from either fear or…something else, I cannot imagine what.  

While I was willing to tolerate this behavior before, now it is unacceptable.  It makes both of us too distracted to find either Pippin or Merry quick enough before the orcs tire of them and hurt them or kill them.  

Gimli, while I have grown to respect and slightly enjoy his company, has little wood craft.  The tracking business falls mainly to him and I, and with my anxiety, his glances, and the general tension between us, it's not being done very well.

How to broach the problem is far more complicated than knowing it need be done.

Would Aragorn answer me if I were to question him directly?  Or would he turn me aside?  I think the former would be more like him; direct and honorable.  It would not be like him to run, much less from me.  

I do not think he fears me, any more than he hates me.  All I know is that he finds my company trying, as I sometimes find his.

That does not stop us from studying the other.

There is weariness in his eyes, one that I do not completely understand.  Humans live shorter lives than we do; yet I feel all most as much wisdom in his eyes as I did in Gandalf or Elrond.  The years between our races are measured the same, and an elf of his age would be yet a young toddler, not even yet a boy.

I wonder if they live life at an intenser degree than we do, or even if that is possible.  Would they feel the bite of steel sharper, sorrow deeper, the pulse of their blood deeper, reminding them of the river of time, and their short swim in it?  How do they breathe?  Do they savor the scents while they have them, or extract and hoard what gems they can trace in the air as dragons hoard gold.  Do they envy us?  Is that why he avoids me so?  

That I can believe.  After all, his Lady Arwen must forswear her immortality to live by his side and be his love, as Luthien did those many years ago.  I pity the Elven maidens whose hearts drew them to death.  

Yet I should pity all the harder if an Elven youth, a male, were ever to fall that deeply in to the well of love.  What would become of us as a race?  We would all be mortal, near human, save the few characteristics that separate our two species.

Would the Aragorn I have come to know do that to his Lady?  I cannot imagine it.  This man, cold and silent though he be, loves life.  He could not take her life, anymore than he would take mine.  

And yet…

If he were to allow her, I believe that she would be but mortal in a wind's breath.  And as for me…

There has never been a case before of a male Elf forsaking his gift for love of a mortal.

That does not mean that there cannot be now.

That does not mean it cannot be I.

That does not mean I cannot love.

…

I had meant to speak with him of the matter immediately as his watch began.  We stopped searching once the sun no longer cast shadows across the trees and the sky itself was no longer grey, but black.  

Camping has become a tedious and dismal affair for myself, who still feels the urge to search ever further, and the frustration of being shackled to those who cannot follow.  

I long for Merry's songs, rustic and idyllic though they were.  Pippin would sometimes join in at the more bawdy choruses, terribly off-key.  Then Merry would get ruffled and Pippin defensive and then the two would be mentioning relations, new and old, in a less than respectable manner, and rough housing on the floor, covered with dirt and leaves.

Boromir would sometimes join in on the mêlée, while Gimli would give the hobbits counsel on the best manner to "beat it to 'im".  Frodo would smile indulgently, and laugh sometimes, a rare feat now, from our Ring bearer.  Samwise would wait anxiously from the sidelines, and giggle at the two when not fretting.  Gandalf would smoke his pipe and shake his head, before turning southeast.

It was time before I realized that when one had lived with elves for so long, one learned how to disappear from even _their_ sight.  This Man was such the case.

He stood in the shadows often, while the rest of the Company would make merry and converse amongst ourselves.  That was when I first took an actual interest him for the fact that he was he, and not because of his interest in myself.

The human might have been carved of stone, or a cancer on a tree trunk, so still stood he.  His grey eyes were ever down cast, a shadow of despair over his face.  He is often silent and contemplative, but rarely does he show any emotions other than loyalty to the hobbits and his devotion to duty.  There was hunger carved on the crevices of his face, and a sorrow in his eyes that I had not thought possible for a creature so short lived.

What does he think, late into the night?  What is he searching the horizon for?

…

I know very little about him, really.

This watch is his.  Gimli's had had the first, and mine was to be the last.  I haven't slept at all.

The stars are still blurry.  They still look sickly.

I blink my eyes.  Even though my they remain open at all times, I cannot see the outside world when I dream.  Sight fades away and darkness edges around my vision until the world turns black.  I, and all my kind, must blink before sight is returned to us.

My eyes turned over to where Aragorn had been stationed.  The spot was empty.  

Nor was he anywhere in my sight.  When had he left?  Why had I not heard him go?  For every second that I had been tracking the descent of the leaves, I should have heard him go.  

I rise silently, and went in search of him.  It is not wise to leave Gimli so unguarded, but Aragorn must be found first.  

It's difficult to tell which direction he went; even had there been full light his tracks would still be difficult to find.  It was some time before I could locate him by the sound of his breathing.

My footsteps were silent, my own breathing not even a whisper.  I stopped breathing once I found him.

He had found a clearing in this dense wood.  How he had done it amazed me; one needs be an Elf to hear the songs of the wood and leaf, and hear them say where spaces in their bracken lie.  

He be a Man.  No Man should have been able to accomplish that.  No Elf could look as he did then.

He stood centered exactly in the clearing, a single sickly beam of moonlight leaning on the trees to his right.  I stood to his left, and saw clearly his profile.  

The light, faint as it was, cast grey and black shadows over the carpeting of leaves, making the floor seem more like water in the dark.  The contrast of light and dark was not lost on the Man himself, as his cloak created shards of darkness and ethereal light enveloping his form.  No light reflected off of him; he seemed to soak up the light, sickly and adulterated though it was.

His head was tilted ever so slightly towards the heavens, yet low enough to see the trunks of the trees.  The dark hair that draped around his face acted as a hood; making darkness surround him, envelop him completely, while his face was bathed in moonlight.  His eyes were closed.  

He looked grave, he looked ancient. The weariness and torment had left his face, and looked at peace.

He looked beautiful.

I have never thought that about him before.  

I had never thought that about him…at all.  

Ever.  

Even remotely, anymore than one would think that bottom of one's shoe is beautiful.  

Interesting perhaps, useful, and reliable certainly.  Not revolting or exceptionally disgusting, but nothing special.  Nothing worthy of praise or notice.  Elves will always retain the features of youth, so the idea of age is native only to Man and Dwarves.  This feature of "aging", had never been thought beautiful by myself or any other creature of my knowledge, but the Man that guides…the Man that leads us…proved me wrong.

He held his neck and head erect, but the strain and tension that I had known native to his posture was gone.  In its place was a quiet dignity.  Dignity, not the arrogance I had always known, but dignity.  Open, but not defenseless.  Majestic.  Royal.

So this was what the hobbits saw in him.

Why had it taken me so long to see it?

How long I stood there drinking in the sight of him, I cannot be certain, save only that it was not long enough.  Nor was the spell broken when his eyelids unsheathed to reveal the silver blue orbs, staring at the trees.  His face and clothes seemed to drink in the light, not even his eyes reflected it.  

Nay, they shone brightly with a light of their own.

Beautiful, a light navy with silver flecked and blurred in them.  

Quite beautiful.

Not as the dull streams in Mirkwood in the snow, nor tinkling aged waterfalls in Lothlorien.  A metallic blue, a cold, shimmering mix of despair and desperation and death.

The light vanished from him when he felt my presence, and turned to look at me.  

And the moment passed.

The dark, shadowy Man was back, the mercenary, dark and sullen eyes widening minutely at the sight of me in surprise, before hiding even that.

His voice was low, gruff, when he demanded my reason for being there.  I gave some excuse that the training in my father's court had prepared me for; courteous, yet vague.  I don't remember what it was, nor his answer.  I am now certain he had sworn at me, but can not remember the exact phrase.  I was still searching for the angel that I had seen locked in the shadows and walls of the Man that I now saw before me.

An angel locked in a demon's cage.

He looked at me in his distant, cold way, a little baffled and suspicious, but again not willing to voice the question that plagued him.

We returned to the camp in silence.  Neither of us spoke nor walked to close to the other, but I could feel the tension arise between us anew and stronger than before.  The walls were mounted yet again, solid and powerful.  But the silence was different.  It was still tense, but no longer full of frustration as it once had been.  

The silence was waiting.  It was knowing.

And I the Elf, and he the Human, the Mercenary, the Angel, or Demon, as the case may be…

We waited with it.


	3. Straying

Disclaimer: Not mine.  Never in a million years and then some mine.

This is what I call the action part, where the reader just sees what happens but doesn't actually know what the characters are thinking.

*I LOVE this part* 

Aragorn was silent, his knees propped up in front of him and his arms resting across them, shoulders hunched and neck bent over, as if awaiting the guillotine.  His coarse, dark clothes were tattered and smudged from travel, while his grey elven cloak kept him hidden in the dark.  His face was contemplative and absent, searching the flames for answers that his own mind and heart could not provide.  

Adjoining him laid Gimli, his breathing heavy and steady, too fatigued to even make the effort of snoring with his usual gusto and flair.  He had fallen asleep on his feet warming himself by the first embers of the fire, and had been laid down by his companions without awakening.  His back now absorbing the heat that the mature embers gave off, his body relaxed for the first time in hours, though they seemed ages, his grubby hand never releasing the handle of his ax.

Not even the thundering of all the orc armies of Sauron could awaken Gimli.  

Yet should they attack, he would be hewing necks amongst them.

Legolas slept some feet away on his back, head propped up on the bundle of his pack.  His long legs were stretched out directly in front of him, his hands clasped tightly over the other and against his chest, eyes open and unblinking.  He faced the open sky, cloudy and a smoky dark grey as it was.  His eyes themselves were unfocused and blank, resembling a comatose or dead person.  His light blond hair was swept back away from his face, an aged, faded gold hue in the firelight, save one errant, short strand.

One, single strand.

If the strand that was arched sideways and laid across the elf's cheeks itched or tickled him, he made no move to relieve the irritation.  Not a muscle in his face twitched, nor did his fingers flex, nor did his breathing hitch in preparation for a sneeze or a sigh.  The Elf ignored the strand completely.

Aragorn remained frozen where he was, his eyes not twitching from the firelight for a second.  Not moving, nor wanting to, nor feeling even the slightest inclination to avert his gaze from the flames that threatened to sear the retinas with the strain and intensity that Aragorn was asking of them.  Not wavering for one second, no, not he.

The forest was silent around them, the tree trunks as imposing as sleeping dogs.  The night was windless and dark, waiting in anticipation for the final link to snap without feeling overbearing.

Gimli slept the sleep of the dead.

Legolas reclined as one who was dead.

Aragorn clenched his fists tightly, clenched his eyes shut desperately, clenched his jaw till it ached.

He leaned forward.

Aragorn, son of Arathorn, arose silently, his neck straightened and his shoulders arranged, and strode with all the authority he could muster over to where Legolas lay as sleek and straight as the elven arrows in his quiver.  Aragorn scowled.

The Man loomed over the elf for longer than a pause, longer than a while, longer indeed than 7 minutes in full.  His facial muscles never moved, nor did his body posture for a moment.  He fingered, no, stroked the hilt of Anduril in the remaining time after the first seven minutes, while the rest of him stayed still.

The Elf, in turn, gazed mindlessly toward the sky; heedless of the scrutiny he was under now.  His own posture remained innocent, secure in his surroundings and company.  His eyes resembled hazy colored glass, cold and flat.

The Man was the first to break the contest of wills and eyes first, crouching down to his haunches and dropping the authority and regality from his posture.  His eyes less intense and searching now, fell softly on his companion.  He released Anduril.

Aragorn lifted his hand half uncurled towards the Elf's face, calluses and dirt visible even the faint light the fire provided and his own body blocked.  

He hesitated briefly.  

He breathed in with a new resolution, extended his hand to its full length and lifted it 6 inches away from the Elf's face.  He then passed it quickly through the stream of the Elf's gaze, checking constantly for the slightest alteration in the size of the pupil or a wavering of the temperature of the frigid depths of the retinas.  

Nothing.

He withdrew his hand then, letting the wrist lie on his knee with his fingers half curled, surveying the elf and the single strand of hair.  Yet another pause passed, while the watcher surveyed the sleeper with an emotion less hostile than before.

The Man lifted his hand from his knee again, the movement sure and decided.  Index and thump poised in a pincer arrangement, with the rest of his fingers relaxed and still half curled, the hand made its way to the strand.  There was no longer a hint of fear or hostility in Aragorn's posture.

A white hand gripped Aragorn's firmly around the wrist.

Not quite hard enough to be painful, but not far from it.  

A normal man would have startled.  A lesser man might have cried out.  Aragorn was neither, and simply stayed in the position he had been in before the white hand had gripped his own.  His one regret was that he had dropped his armor of authority and hostility and now it was too late to rearm them before Legolas could see him.

Where the white hand had come from, it was uncertain.  Obviously from the Elf's chest where the other hand still rested, but when had it moved, how had it known it was there, how had _Legolas_ known he was there…

To those questions he had no answers.  He had but to wait for the Elf to explain himself, and pray he himself would not stutter nor blush nor do anything else so incriminating or embarrassing.

The Elf's eyes remained locked on the stars, not seeing them nor seeing anything else either.  The muscles in his white face remained motionless, the bones and cold flesh of his hands gripping Aragorn's wrist did not twitch, nor could he feel the Elf's blood pulsing beneath the frigid skin.  Aragorn's own blood ran slow and cold itself, his heart beating irregularly.

Aragorn waited, not willing to be the first to break the silence and still of the forest and moment.  

And waited.

And stared.

Legolas never moved, never tightened his grip nor loosen it, nor break the filmy sheen over his eyes with the focus of consciousness or the blinking of waking.

A crease appeared between the brows of the Man, and he frowned at the eyes.

Aragorn tugged lightly on the grip that the Elf held, feeling the hand maintain the same degree of pressure, while the Elf's eyes never wavered.  The Man scowled at the eyes.

His other hand rose from it's warm place on his crouched knee, and moved assuredly to the head of the Elf, hovered briefly half uncurled in front of his face, before compressing into a fist of hard calcium bone and weathered skin and plummeting down to strike him in his exposed eyes.

The Man stopped his hand before it brushed the single strand of hair that was the reason for the matter.

The Elf had not blinked.  Nor twitched.

The Man straightened his neck and the crease in his brow smoothed out in relief.  Aragorn inhaled deeply, though silently, and his heart resumed its normal tha-thump, tha-thump, and the circulating blood made his skin warm again.

He eyed the grip that held his hand so tightly, and moved his free hand to hover above the fingers, as they were perpendicular with the sky.  He did not touch the other's hand, though the proximity was quite close.  His own hand was dark and tattered with scars and burns against the fair skin that was so close to it.  

The Man could feel an increasing heat and humidity between the palm of his free hand and the open parts of his wrists, and held his hands steady.  The warmth from his body concentrated and grew, till a thin sweaty film coated Aragorn's open palm.  The icy grip no longer cut off the blood to his fingers.  The forearm, clad in light blue and wrist guards, showed the muscles relaxing.

Then, painfully slowly, by mere centimeters and minutes, he guided all three hands to the Elf's chest, waiting for the fingers to laxen in their strength.  When the white finger tips began to deviate from the Man's wrist and straighten into a more relaxed position, the Man waited, letting the warmth of both his hands relax the cold flesh between them, as a rock and sunshine would relax a reptile or lizard.

The Elf's hand was still firm, but unguided, and slid from the wrist of the Man to his own hand that rested on his chest, to clasp it loosely onto his own cold hand.  Moisture could be seen where the Elf's running hand brushed against his unused one.  Both hands, though still clasped against his chest, held each other looser, in a more relaxed posture. 

The Man, just briefly, just lightly, just barely discernable in the darkness of the woods and the shadowed crevices of his own face---smiled.

And with the hand that had been entrapped, pinched the tip of the single strand of hair and carefully pulled it back to where the majority of it rested.

Aragorn then stood without glancing at the Elf again, pivoted smartly yet silently on his heel and walked back to fire, which had died down to smoldering crimson embers in his absence, and where Gimli continued to snore.

His steps sounded loud to him, and his sat down in his previous post, returning to stare at them embers.  His eyes were not focused on the embers with the same intensity as before, and his breathing was slightly faster than it had been but other than that he was as he had been before and had never moved a hair.

His shoulders were hunched, and his grey elf cloak covered his tattered clothing, and under the cloak his hands lay across each other, enjoying the warmth that they provided each other and fingers rubbed against the callused joints.

He sat like that for half an hour, hands rubbing against and over each other, till a glance at the sky and the stars made him stand once again.  Walking over to Gimli, he shook the dwarf's shoulder gently.

The snoring continued.

Aragorn frowned, and whacked him on the back with his open palm.

A snort, a groan, yet another whack with a closed fist, and Gimli was awaken and up and on watch.  

Aragorn took the Dwarf's sleeping place and posture, with his back towards the fire and his head nestled in the crook of both arms.  Gimli in turn sat down heavily in the spot that Aragorn had held, head pushed up by his fist.

With bleary eyes Gimli frowned at the dimming flames, and with a few muttered words stood back up and swinging his ax cheerfully strode into the woods, leaves crunching beneath his heavy steps and thick boots.  Even when he was many yards in the gloom, the remote crunching could still be heard.

Roughly six minutes of complete stillness save the flaring of the embers passed over the campsite, where both Man and Elf layed silent under the high treetops.  Not even an autumn leaf fell during those six minutes.

Then a small, tentative stroking of fingertips against one another broke the moments.  Slow, thoughtful movements, stroking the bottom of his thumb over the top of his fingertips.  Feeling the smoothness of his fingernails, the rough, scratchy feel of knuckle joints that connected the tips to the rest of the fingers.

Legolas continued to stare up into cloudy dark sky, eyes glazed, unseeing, and unfeeling.

He blinked.

He lifted the topmost hand up from his chest and held it white against the dark sky, still rubbing his fingers together and studying them clinically.  He fully extended his hand, and turned it over on both sides.  No emotion passed through his features, save one of that of curiosity and detachment.

With the same hand, he smoothed down the back of his hair, feeling out the single strand that had been the cause for Aragorn's sudden interest and on locating it, wrung it through his thumb and index, squeezing whatever moisture had been left in there out.

He then held the hand in front of his face, searching his white skin for traces or clues for an indeterminate crime.  The Elf turned the hand over and around, and it could be noted that his skin was the back of his hand was the same tone of white as the palm.  He also had very little visible hair on the back, if any at all.

He pulled his hand closer to his face, under his nose, and sniffed it curiously.

If his senses were able to find any scent unusual, whether alluring or revolting, his face gave no sign of it.

But he kept his hand there long after the smell-test was conducted, no longer rubbing his fingers together but instead searching to dark clouds that hid the stars.  Though windless and quiet in the woods, a current was circulating high up in the heavens; his keen eyesight allowed him to discern the gaseous figures colliding and reforming.

Legolas unfolded his hand from its half curled position under his chin, and very delicately, with just the fingertips, traced his windpipe down through the skin on his throat.

Looking very much like a cat, he rubbed his throat back up using the side of his neck and the back of his hand, over his jaw line and across his cheekbones to his forehead and smoothed down his hair.  He was able to find the single strand of hair without searching for it this time.  He ran the strand through his fingers again.

He relaxed his hand there for a while longer, and made evident his first emotion aside from curiosity regarding the incident.

Legolas was breathing faster.

Not much faster, certainly nothing that could be heard from a feet from him, and certainly nothing that the casual observer could detect from a close distance.  The air appeared to be going in and out of his nose and lungs at the same speed it had been all night.  There was only one thing that betrayed him, really.

His remaining hand that was clutched painfully tight against his chest was rising and falling slightly faster than before.  And it was at irregular intervals, too.

The Elf closed his eyes slowly, his face as cold and impassive as ever.

Moving his entire arm forward in one smooth movement, he held his hand in front of his face once more.  Now his hand was clutched in a fist.

He licked his lips nervously.

Moving slowly, he rubbed the knuckles against his cheek, kneading his fist into the sensitive skin under his eye, and ever so softly, ever so slowly, brushed the back of his hand against his lips.  Painfully slow, feeling the bones under the cool flesh and the dried stickiness of sweat brush gently against his lips.  His index ran across the slender length of his bottom lip, pressing down on it and making his mouth open slightly.

Eyes still closed, the tip of his tongue slid across the tip of his finger, under his nail.  He clenched his eyes tighter and inhaled deeply.  

He didn't move.  

He didn't breathe.

Now the whole length of his tongue slid out, and pressed fully against the length of his hand, starting from the base of his wrist, lingering at the knuckles, all the way to the fingertips.  Therein, his index slid inside his mouth up to the knuckle, while his tongue licked and sucked at it.  Pressing his lips tightly together, the index slid out shining but relatively dry.

Legolas opened his eyes carefully, slowly, and stared at his index, and indeed entire hand.  The faint light of the stars could barely trace out the trails where his saliva had passed.

"Humph."

Gimli was scowling darkly at the Elf.

When he had returned from his errand, how long he had been standing there, how much he had seen…it was uncertain.

The Elf returned the gaze impassively and levelly, and made his own opinions towards the other's race known.  They maintained their staring contest for little less than half a minute, before Gimli snorted again and dropped his gaze first and began to administer the fire that had gone out completely.

"Goddamn elves", Gimli muttered.  "Always said you couldn't leave alone without havin' to check over your shoulder every bloody second."

Gimli continued to mutter, following along the lines of Men and keeping a decent fire and Elves in all their peculiarity.

For his part, Legolas recrossed his hands at his chest for the third time and with opened eyes turned to the sky and pretended to sleep.  He did not appear to be listening to Gimli.


	4. Regrets

Argh.  Sorry this took so long coming out, it's all Legolas' fault.  He's too hard to write, and way to nice to understand right.  Anyway, his part should be coming out soon, and the next part is already set just not written yet.  Thank people for reviewing, I think I'm gonna cry from everybody who said this loved this, it really means a lot to me.  

Special Thanks to Kyrri for getting me started again, and Jessie, aka The Ice Cream Assassin for backing her up and keeping me going.  Don't know where I'd be without your guys' yells and emails, except maybe not working.

Warnings: Musing, slash ahead.

Disclaimer: Not mines.  Bankrupt anyway.

Aragorn's POV

By Elbereth, by the Stars in the Heavens and the Valar over the sea, have mercy on my soul for I have failed.  I have failed and I have fallen.

The blood runs true, it runs deep, and now I know it runs strong.  I failed, I capitulated, I have proven myself to be of the same flesh and blood and mind that Isildur was, the same weakness to temptation.

Yet what burns my pride, what fuels my anger to point that I grip the handle of Anduril so tightly that the blood is stopped and I am deaf the aches and cold that wriggle and itch over my knuckles and palm, is that I fell so easily.  That I might fall I always knew, I am a Man, and Men fall.  Yet I had not wanted to fall so easily, so willingly, like a docile cow being led to slaughter with a placid stare and stupid smile.

I fell too easily.  I succumbed too quickly. 

Damn him.  

Damn him and the ones that gave him birth and whatever progeny he happens to spawn and _most certainly_ double damn the lame hare-lipped _wench_ that will give birth to his children. 

For some wench will.  A Lady of most noble birth, and princess perhaps, and when and if Legolas is ever king or not he will most certainly be required to pass on the family name.  I hate and despise this wench, this whore, this creature who does not yet have a face or a name with quite possibly my entire soul and heart.  

For she will have something that it is foolish and dangerous for me to even dream.  Of which I _should_ not dream, yet cannot resist.

I am weak.  I should be dragged off and hanged for it, and would do the deed myself and prevent the occurrence of a second Isildur in myself were it not for the possibility that my duty has not yet released me from a contract I never signed.  Sauron must be defied, Gondor must be guarded, the Quest and Fellowship cannot break further, and…I should like, very much, for the Ring Bearer and his companions to live to old age.

So this weakness must be endured for yet longer, and the fell blood that runs in my veins hoped to be controlled, while my duty still yet calls.

Yet now it has made itself known to me, I know now what its limits are and am neither pleased nor reassured.  I know how far I need to be pushed to fall, and it is neither far nor hard.

I touched him.

I was helpless to the urge, to the calling of his skin, the fever and ants that surfaced and sunk into the pads of my fingertips.  I had wanted to for so long now, to learn the texture of it, taste the temperature of it…and I still do.  I still feel the ice water cold of his blood, clear, chilling and foreboding, deadly in the dullest of ways.  The strand of hair that had been the catalyst for my trial was far softer than silk, finer than hair on an infant, so fragile that it should have broken in my fingers.  It should have broken; it did not feel strong enough.  I still have the bruises on my wrist from where he gripped me, light gray marks on my wrist that pulse with beat of my heart.  

I regret it.  

I regret every second that I spent with suffering from the feel of frostbite from his skin, the fear that I would be discovered, the hope that he would open his eyes and see me, the urge to slake myself with his body, and the compulsion to run to the oceans in the West where none knew my name and never look back.

Yet he never awoke, my sin and intrusion remain hidden from his sharp grey eyes and my guilt lays a heavy yoke on my neck alone.  I wish he did know, that he might harangue me and lay visible this weakness, this disease that I carry.  I wish for him to take away the darkness that envelops my heart, the doubt that clouds my head, even if it means burning away my pride and dreams, and making me less than what I am now.

I want him to save me.  

But I will –not- ask.

I cannot…ask.  

And now I will never have the chance.

The moment is passed now, I cannot bring it back.  The moment was truly nothing special, yet phenomenal.

I gave in and had the briefest, lightest, most innocent of dabbling in the taste-texture of him and now I will never stop hungering for it.  I know this in my heart, and the void inside me grows deeper, the ache stronger than ever, the darkness that lies even darker in contrast to the light of his heart that I shall never see.  

I want him now, most certainly.  

Before I had simply longed for him.

I could control it before.

Before.

Dammit.  

What have I done?

I _will_ get what want; I _must_ get what I want, solace from this hunger, this fever and plague that ravages my skin and mind.  I cannot live without it, and I am deeply ashamed of my weakness, of my own selfishness.  

Of how much Isildur still lives in me.

I will have him, or I will go insane with the memory of what might have been, and perhaps go insane one day and take him whether he will or no.  Such is a thing Isildur would have done, and did, to have others suffer for his own pleasure.  Such is a thing _I_ am capable of doing, this I know.  That should not be allowed to happen.

I draw Anduril two inches out his sheath, strong and shining even in the shadowed light, wielded by Elendil the Tall, and possibly the only item of purity that I own, save Arwen's pendent, which grows cumbersome and heavy as time passes.  I long for her counsel, her gentle wisdom and words now, her light to ease the pain.  

The gem now presses against the hollow where my neck is attached to my chest.  I have a mind for Anduril to follow, except lower in my chest where he would be more efficient.  

Would it be so terrible if I were to awake cold and bloody?

Anduril's blade gleams seductively, dappled spots and lines glimmering where it had been broken and remade.  It was beautiful, it would taste cold and deep, made of sure Westernese steel and iron.  Elrond had taken pains that the sword resembled much the same as it did when Elendil bore it, using his own memories as a template.  Another temptation, yet one that might not end so badly.  

Would it be so terrible?

Yes.  Yes it rather would.  It would be blatantly cowardly for one thing, and while I feel deeply the sharp spears of fear I will not always go were they prod.  It would be abandoning Gimli.  It would be betraying Frodo.  It would be razing Gondor.  

And, as much as I hate the bastard, the fool, the arrogant little snit of an angel that has become my torment and desire…I cannot desert him, either.  It would not be right, or fair to anyone, even to a demon creature such as him.  

To make me want him.  To make me lov…_lust_ so deeply after him.  Damn him.  Damn him high and low, from the far west of Valinor to the east of whatever lands lie beyond the shadow of Mordor, damn him from the moment that he took his first breath to the moment he takes his last.

Damn it all.

What have I done?


	5. Taste

Disclaimer: Not mines. Make no money I. No sue, please.   
Warnings: A/L Slash. No flame.   
  
Author's Rant: Hey peeps. New chapter, Legolas's POV, more thinking, sorry about that. Action scene comes next, I promise, more touching and tension, but I'm not sure how soon. The easy part is the thinking, the hard part is writing it up.   
Anyway thanks for reviewing, especially tindomerel for saying it was sexy, which I take as a big compliment because I'm not sure I understand the concept completely. Thanks also to Philosopher At Large for comments, yes I know the fic strays from the books, but that's because when I started the first chapter I hadn't read the books, just the movie. Now I have read the trilogy and Simalrillion, but I don't plan to change the characters a lot because of them because I'm more concerned with the character's integrity than the books'. I will try to sneak in facts though. To Akemi and Gendo, you guys rock I love you madly, and if you two were real I would marry you. Or, one of you, anyway. Muchas Gracis por la Blue Seeeress for Beta reading.  Special thanks to Kyrri for all her insights on Legolas and research.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Elves do not sleep, truly. We dream and require periods of rest to regain our strength but we never forget our settings, what time it is, like Men and Dwarves and Halfings do. I dreamt last night, and it was no different than any past.   
  
Alone was I in a dark misty void. I could not hear the sound of my breath nor voice when I called. I felt alone yet watched, the urge to flee but did not move. I was unarmed, and hunted, yet not afraid. I was waiting.   
  
Something reached towards me, a cord of solid and tangible greyness, not evil nor darkness yet neither someone I would trust.   
  
I seized it first, held it.   
  
The dark greyness swirled under my grasp, but did not flinch nor wriggle, and was not cold. It felt like ash wood, dense and half dead, with no texture nor marks on it save it's liquidly structure.   
  
Heat came from it, and above it, like sunshine, yet damp, like steam. It did not move to harm me, and the warmth was…comforting. My hair was stroked gently. It reminded me of Mirkwood in the late summer.   
  
At that time the kitchens would be steaming with food during the festivals with spices and cooking oil thick in the air. I would hide under the tables and chairs, pretending I was a ranger or sentinel in thick woods, searching for fell prey.   
  
The kitchen maids would hover like so many crows at a nest, scolding "Get thee gone now, princling. We've 'nough to do without thy father comin' for yee", and at the same time slipping me sweet meats and honeyed fruit and various types of bread under the table and petting my hair and saying how cute I was.   
  
So between the scolding and giving and stealing, I would have tasted every dish for the banquet before any other in the kingdom, even Lord Thranduil.   
  
I thought perhaps that everything was a dream, and that I was truly awake in Mirkwood in the late summer. That it was not the chill hence spring, that I was not alone, that I was not cold, that I was not hunted.   
  
And I wanted it so much to be true, that I awoke.   
  
And saw the tinted stars in the frosty clouds ahead, the darkness overwhelming.   
And saw reality all around me. The dying trees, Gimli's vague muttering, the cold still air that enveloped the night.   
  
Of Mirkwood there naught remained save my own self, and what trinkets and tools that I had brought from there. I was alone. As I had been, as I would be, as always until the quest ended or I died. I would be alone. I was a foolish to think otherwise.   
I felt foolish, why should anything change now, because of a dream.   
  
And yet my hand was still warm, my hair disturbed and tingling.   
  
I rubbed my fingers against each other, savoring the warmth that one gave to the other, while puzzling the circumstance. It did feel wonderful though, as if a little bit of sunshine had outraced the night and moon simply to give me comfort. It was a nice thought, a bit selfish, but nice nonetheless.   
  
How had this occurred, from what source?   
  
It had not rained else wise the rest of myself would be wet and not warm, the air was a still musty-dry, so the heavy warm fog that comes some summers was not a cause either. In all the clear cutting cold, the sole possible sources of warmth were we, we three companions of flesh and blood, lest the orcs roaming the woods feel a sudden compassion for a lone elf.   
  
And Frodo will face Sauron and get drunk on Shirish mead and lembas, while Gollum and Elladan wait on them. Right.   
  
I had been dreaming ere the warmth, which was likely the cause for the warmth spilled on my skin and blood stirring in my arm. Much as it aggrieves us, Elves sometimes do not control our bodies when our minds in sleep are over activate, as I have for the last months. The act irritating and embarrassing, and we pity Men all the more who speak as well as move when they sleep unwell.   
  
Likely one had held my hand and stroked my hair while I slept to calm me, case I had been moving unnaturally.   
  
Touched my skin while I slept…   
  
Without my permission or knowledge, of only their own volition or will or desire.   
  
My cheeks flamed at this gap of vulnerability, as well as the either selfness or the concern of the toucher. I, who have been roused by a back stretching down the corridor from my bedroom in Mirkwood, I who can feel when the rain will be falling an hour before it does by the change in the air no matter how weary I am …I felt nothing.   
  
I could have been killed so easily, so obscenely easily without even knowing the knowledge that I had been killed or who my murder had been.   
  
For one of the few times in my life, I felt fear. Not the fear of dying however, I have yet to feel that panic, and believe I never shall. But the fear of when I might die, how I might fall, and if that shadow shall ever fall on me, or shall it pass. This night, this manner, and with an unknown murderer…this was not how I imagined dying. Not this way, not this way at all.   
  
Yet it was a tenuous panic, caused by shame of carelessness and fear of what have been.   
  
Gimli would not bother with me, lest he was suddenly seized by some source of madness. With rift between our races, likely more he would offer a throbbing shoulder and a few gruff yet benign words should my nightmares make their notice.   
  
Not the Man. Never the Man. Not in a millennia. While the secrecy and mystery of the matter suits him well, he naught care for my health, nor likely many others. As long as the remaining Company was vertical, his duty was done. Whether we slept ill was not his concern; I did not want his pity. An outside source was a more prudent guess; a complete stranger would be kinder than him. Far more civil also.   
  
It would be…pleasant, if he were to take the time to treat me in a somewhat civilized manner, but that will not happen anymore than the sun will rise from the west. Yet the only other creatures to traverse these woods save we are orcs.   
  
My fingers ran to back of my head, where the fibers were disturbed and slightly damp. One strand in particular, stiffer and separated from the rest, oiled down. My nurse always threatened to cut that strand off, as it always found it's way to my face when I was a child. Oil ran out of it, and onto my fingers.   
  
Elves are a rather unique race compared to most of Middle Earth. We have a high stamina, a natural healing art, and live forever. We have not the strength of Dwarves, nor the recklessness of Men, but our immortality.   
  
Our bodies are verily different from any other creature, and one of these traits is that we do not sweat. We cannot. Ever. Our bodies are always cool, and the temperature rarely raises, so for an embarrassingly long time I thought the habit to sweat was native to horses only.   
Then I learned.   
  
Even with the faint lighting and my grogginess, the sheen of moisture on my hand was clear, only on the outside and sides.   
  
Sweat. That was what the moisture was. Another creature's sweat and dirt on my hand. I wanted to spit, and if not for my upbringing I would have. Instead, I sniffed at my hand, listening to check that Gimli was still deep in the wood and the Man asleep. My senses identified the basic complex on my fingers, not exactly an Elvish skill, but one of a Ranger, or a hunter.   
  
Horse sweat smells of straw and warm animal fat and wet fur. This sweat that I now had smelled of salt and vinegar, of dry broken leaves and oiled leather and steel.   
  
Steel and leather.   
  
The Dwarf's axe is made of iron, combined with other metals long buried under earth to make the weapon unyielding. The handle is of oak wood, aged and well finished and oiled. The Man's sword is of steel with a leather and bone handle, the bone polished like ivory and the leather well oiled with sweat and tallow.   
  
Him. The Man. I have, a part-something of…that Man, on my hand.   
  
My front teeth clenched together, while my cold hand shoved itself deeper into my breastbone, causing my heart to beat irregularly because of the unexpected pressure. I hoped not to break any bones, but that was not a concern then. How could he? That liar, deceiver, may he be striked with lightening, may his sword break again in battle, that cheat, that conniver, may the wind blow suddenly and my arrow find his neck, his innards sizzle and writhe on searing hot knives. 

My shoulders pulled back, wanting nothing more to shrug as far as their ligaments would allow them from the soil on me. I concentrated on the skies, lest I did something rash.   
  
I should hurt him. I think I will.   
  
And yet, the crime was not cataclysmic. Nothing that had happened before. I had been drenched in the blood of enemies and drool of spiders before this, and their fluids had not brought on this anger, though their death followed it. Quickly. What about this disturbs me so, the mere fact that I have oil on my hands or that…that he did it without my knowledge.   
  
He didn't want me to know. He who won't even deign to meet my eyes, whom hides himself from me and now he cares if I sleep well or not? Now?   
  
But…why? He avoids me when possible, refuses to meet my eyes at all costs, and will not touch me, not even my fingers. Inconsequential objects and matters like passing rations of lembas or water skin or even brushing my cloak when we run and track. I wonder at the effort and time he takes to keep his distance. I think he fears I bear a plague. Though my own woodcraft is equal, nay, exceeds his own, he is rare to ask for my reading in the leaves and earth. This aversion, while irritating, was reliable. I knew he would avoid me. I knew what to expect. Now I am not certain what I know   
  
I should hurt him for his actions. He earns punishment for his deceit, for his selfishness.   
  
One does not ignore an Elf, one of the Fair Folk, in constant while their eyes be open, and then fawn and sweat over them when our eyes are closed and our trust placed. One does not lie to an Elf, tell them that thy character is coarse and dark and threatening, then show a new face, a fairer one, one of grace and power and heart-breaking loneliness and ethereal sensuality when it pleases them.   
  
…   
  
Grace? 

Sensuality?   
  
…   
  
Ye Gods.   
  
My racing heart stumbled on my rib bones and tumbled into the top of my stomach, where it lay panting and throbbing irregularly. Though my blood was already slightly cool, the temperature fell a little further, far beyond comfort.   
  
This creature that I knew was not attractive. Nor amiable or even moderately civil. This creature, this Man…Beautiful?   
  
I thought this insanity once before, and concluded that it was merely a trick of the lighting, the fatigue of our efforts and the despair that tolls on my spirit, making me see radiance and light where there were none. To go mad once is permissible, especially on our journey, but to fall twice? Twice?   
  
My fingers, saturated with the mortality of another, danced lightly on my throat and esophagus, which were vibrating with the amounts of air they were forced to transport. The motion relaxed my heartbeat somewhat, reminded my lungs that they still needed air to flow through them. That the Man's oils were also being rubbed on was disturbing, yet calming in a loose way.   
  
I think…I was going into shock. Yes, the feeling was familiar, and not welcome.   
  
On finding outposts, sometimes whole villages of Mirkwood ravaged and razed by wargs and spiders, I have seen warriors, grown elves and apprentices venturing into the wilderness to fight for the first time would feel no grief at all. 

Only indignance, faint annoyance over the bloodied and torn bodies of friends and family. One morning a companion once pointed out an arm to me out of the melee and said that the owner had courted his older sister for marriage, and they had a child. The Elf found his sister's necklace still in the arm's hand.   
  
It wasn't until late that night that the Elf started to cry and scream. He could have only been 90, maybe 100 years old at the time, a child still.   
  
Shock. That was what was happening to me now. It wouldn't be later in the morning that I would truly feel the anger and revulsion that I should be feeling, and pierce his throat with my knives. Or an arrow, just to demonstrate my skill. I hope Gimli won't hold it against me.   
  
Or perhaps I should stay away from him, because the Fellowship truly has lost too many of its members already. I am certain Elrond would not approve of the murderer of his foster son, nor would my own father.   
  
My hand trailed up and down my neck idly, of its will, without my permission. Cheeky, this hand of mind, like the Man who touched it. Unpredictable. Maybe some of his influence is controlling it. That is likely. True, really. I don't want it to do what it's doing. Soothing though.   
  
My fingernails trailed up my neck, causing the nerves to tingle and squirm, scraping a faint hollow that crested and formed my jaw. My finger pads flowed back down my esophagus and Adams apple, bumping gently against the ridges in the tubing under the skin. My palm cradled my jawbone, while my hand twisted so that the back ran across my cheekbones, pressing down on my eyes till webs of red could be seen against the dark of my mind.   
  
I didn't want to feel this. The neck is the surest way to slay a creature, where even Elves are unprotected, where fangs and claws and razors will always aim. For one whom death is only studied and watched, it's uncomfortable to be reminded of this delicate cord of sinew and skin that keeps me anchored to life.   
  
It made me uncomfortable, to be reminded of this vulnerability. To feel my palm press down, I would go so far to say that it made me frightened, but that would be untrue. Elves know too much to be completely attached to life. Always knowing that you would wake to see another morning, no matter how horrific it would be, no matter how many friends one would have to watch wane and die. At times, I envy the mortals.   
  
And yet, I do not stop.   
  
My palm cradled my jawbone, while my hand twisted and rubbed my skin into my muscles so that the back ran across my cheekbones, pressing down on my eyes till webs of red could be seen against the dark of my mind. The bottom of wrist pulled the skin at my forehead, relieving some of the flat tension worms that burrowed and agitated my mind. I fought to suppress a moan of relief, pleasure flowing over me sweeter than water, over the ridges of cheekbones and through my neck, settling in the middle of my chest. 

Even through the feeling was unnerving, or perhaps because of it, the motion felt…relaxing. Soothing, even. I ran my fingers back through my hair, finding the errant strand almost instantly. My fingertips pressed hard on my scalp, relaxing the tension, calming me, leading me back to sleep. Leis used to do this, before she became bonded and married. The kitchen servants in Mirkwood did this also. My fingers extended, holding the front of my skull.  
  
I didn't think like that, I didn't want this. Was not the temptation of the Ring enough, the orcs of Saruman and the threat of Sauron suitable enough? I should be rising, hurting him, interrogating him, I should trying to exact revenge, and instead I'm massa--- not doing much of anything.   
  
I could almost feel his pain through his eyes, that translucent silvery-blue eyes that held me enraptured that night, and haunted me the following day. I do not remember much now about his eyes, save that they remind of Elbereth's gifts in the heavens when I try. Too blue to be starlight, too bright to be water, and far too luminous and silvery to be of sapphire. Were there such a thing as a blue silver steel, I would name his eyes that.   
  
Why would he care? Why would he act?   
  
For what reasons inexplicable this icy blue angel that resides in that shell that prison of a Mercenary…did care. He did care; somebody in all these dead phantom trees did care. Or, seem to. Might be able to. About me.   
  
Perhaps I should have cried. I felt a little like crying. I felt like screaming my frustration and confusion for the heavens to answer, for had awoken in hope of finding myself home among friendly and familiar faces and had instead woken to the most potent and deadliest of deceits…a half-truth. For I was not home…. yet there was the slightest implication of the impossibility that someone might care here. Someone, I neither knew nor understood and altogether doubted his existence. I didn't even _like_ him.  
  
Yet, as I think back to my earlier words, beauty and nobility, I would not mind accompanying that angel on whatever travails it took to free it. I could serve him, could have him for a friend and leader, someone to care for and someone to care in return.   
Even if he be mortal…even if he be strange and dark, even if he be given already. Given already, to the most deserving of ladies, the Tinuveil.   
  
  


Would I do that? Could I do that? Take what is not mine; take this mystery, this burden, this werewolf? I do not even know him; do not truly _like_ him, yet I am considering jeopardizing my own well-being and another's heart for him. 

Perhaps…

Perhaps I am too shocked to think straight. Yes, I think so.

I could not do that. No. No I don't think so. For one, I am certain the Lady would try at revenge. With her father and brothers at her aid, I doubt I would live to my golden years.

For another, I am certain that the Man would skew and hew with his sword before he would allow me to touch him. Possibly with Elladan and Elhorir at his side, offering advice.

For third, I do believe that I would rather slit my own throat before love a mortal. For when my love, my true _love_ and not simply my _lover_, is to leave this world for whatever place human souls go when they pass, they will take my heart with them. To love a mortal is to commit suicide. And I am not done living yet.

Of what am I speaking? I should be devising how to bring the matter up, not composing poetry of his beauty, which falls from him in the light of day, as does the life from trolls. A troll, a werewolf, are this human's relations. Fell creatures, things of adversity, inferiority, nothing to be concerned with. 

And yet…why do I think of him still? 

Still feel him. Still feel the ghosts of his fingers, my fingers, across of skin and ache for more. A deeper, darker feeling. Why do I hunger for something I do not _want_? How is this possible? Why won't he leave me alone?

My other hand rose and fell rapidly on my chest.

  
Ah, the hell with it. I already smell like a human, it's not like a deeper gouge would be noticed on my bow next to the numerous scratches. I licked the tip of one finger cautiously, carefully, labeling the tastes and sensations as they trickled down the avenue of my tongue and down my throat. 

Lukewarm, salt and dust mostly, the salt stabbing at the insides of my cheeks, the dust coating the roof of my mouth. The faint hint of vinegar, sour yet succulent, uniquely human, the lime green memory spoke of culture and wealth.   
  
I did not think. I did not try. I did not want to.   
  
My tongue darted out with a will of it's own, pressed itself full against the back of my hand, felt the bones that unfurled out from my wrist. The muscles under my skin were cold, hard.

Warmth spread wings across my cheeks, flowed down my throat in a golden, beautiful movement, pooling in my stomach and varnishing my legs. The weariness fell, and I blinked as my heartbeat sped up. I hadn't felt this way since we left Lorien, nay, Rivendell. I desperately wanted to race the length of Fanghorn, wrestle and fight, dispel the energy that healed my scars in my soul and eased the fatigue, literally overflowed my being. It was too much, it was too powerful, and it was addictive. _Very_ addictive. 

I stared at my hand in wonder. 

What was _that_?

Gimli snorted.

I did not start, and merely turned my eyes toward him, not even dignifying with moving my entire head.

When had he returned? Why had I not heard him?

Had he seen me? He glared at me, or made the attempt at any rate. He had caught me unaware, and would not allow me to forget. I returned the glare, as I was an Elf and he was not. That was reason enough to glare at a dwarf, a naugrim. 

He looked away first, and snorted under his breath. He started swearing softly, loud enough for me to hear, but quiet enough to keep the Human from awaking.   
  
He tasted like sex. Odd. That was why it was familiar. I had drank this juice off the throat and stomachs of former lovers, human and elf alike. Yet never had I known anyone to taste this way all the time. Of indecency, of seduction, and of promise.   
Potential.   
  
By the Valar. I am going to have to kill him tomorrow. 


	6. Caught

Author's Note: Minor note, there are no grammar mistakes. It's all intentional, unless I screwed up somewhere, and I'm hoping I didn't. Welcome to the next issue.  
  
  
  
  
  
The setting was the same, the stillness of the woods, and the vigilance of the watch, the anticipation and dread for morning when the cycle would begin anew.  
  
The cycle of searching, of hoping hope against hope and experience and falling into the dull familiar pit of despair as the sun fell also.  
  
Gimli had remained aggressively cheerful throughout the day, after starting the morning by punching Aragorn awake. He had planned the moment out, aimed carefully, and landed a fair blow to the Man's shoulder without even making a sound. That the Man had clouted him awake the night before had not been forgotten.  
  
Aragorn had awoken that morning to a cheerful grin and an aching shoulder where Gimli had 'tapped' him awake. His watch had ended at daybreak, when the Company broke and continued the search.  
  
Legolas had been awake before Gimli's shift was ended, and leaning against one of the many scraggly trees facing east, at least half an hour before dawn. No words were traded between him and the dwarf.  
  
Gimli hadn't even sniggered at the Look Legolas was scalding the defenseless trees with. Had they not been so ancient and enduring, they would burst into flame.  
  
When he caught the quizzical glances that Gimli was sneaking, Legolas' eyelids dropped, hiding his eyes and turned his head and shifted his body till only parts of his back remained uncovered by the old tree. Gimli blinked, and grunted; in either understanding or annoyance.  
  
Most Elves were not prone to show their anger until they were ready to swear and die for it. That's how you could tell if Legolas was angry, since his face would not indicate otherwise. His eyes didn't narrow, didn't sizzle or snap, but simply shut the doors and curtains, and hid themselves.  
  
Hidden from the world, from people who would use what emotions he was feeling against him, from people that would be hurt against him. To control him, keep the anger and fire smoldering inside him, where it could hurt no one.  
  
Aragorn had looked at Legolas only once, when the Man had arisen the and saw the archer's back turned to him, the sunlight a faint white mist, his hands empty and still.  
  
Neither had looked at each other the rest of the day, nor said any words. Since the day's routine was silently, mutually planned to running at top speed, this was not unusual. The scenery refused to change, even Legolas had begun to tire of the decrepit, weary trees.  
  
Gimli noticed Legolas lagging a little, not yet behind himself, as he was the slowest of the group, but still not racing along with Aragorn either. Aragorn usually led, with Legolas abreast and off to one side, holding back his speed for his companions while his eyes searched the ground and skies.  
  
The sun colored the trees to the color of dog's pelt, and the mist began to thin, sound gradually returned to the air. They burst out of the woods, and onto the green plains that Aragorn called Rohan.  
  
Now the Elf was only a few steps in front of him, while Aragorn swallowed the ground in a distance-eating gallop. After a few hours of Gimli half- halting his run for fear of tripping on the Elf's floppy sodding boots he began to scowl, as he did not have the breath to swear.  
  
The Elf himself did not speed up, even after he gave a discreet jump to keep the Dwarf from stepping on him. His face no longer turned to the right, but his eyes still looked everywhere, thorough, desperate. His eyes lighted briefly, dishonestly, on Aragorn.  
  
Then he stopped.  
  
"GODS DA-", Gimli shouted, a sound muffled by the back of the Elf's legs were his head had hit and the ground. The Dwarf's helmet caught the Elf in the back of the thighs, making the Elf's knees buckle instantly and articulate, "Ngh!" Both fell to the ground.  
  
Aragorn turned to check back.  
  
"Stay!" he shouted. "Do not follow me yet!"  
  
He ran a distance to the side, combing the grass.  
  
"Stupid Elf! Ye dinna 'ave to stop like that! Where in the 'ells does he think he's off to now? Run and stop, run and stop, all day long you, you, Tall people!" he swore condescendingly, "Why can't yae make up yer bloody minds! That's all I ask!"  
  
Legolas looked mildly affronted and guilty and sidled away a bit. He still looked Elfishly aloof, and his eyes turned to follow Aragorn. Gimli swore some more in Dwarfish.  
  
Aragorn returned before Gimli could begin his tirade on why Elves were naturally flimsy and fickle.  
  
"The hobbits have been here. Their tracks lie yonder, and look what in the grass I found." Aragorn opened his hand, a clover brooch inside it.  
  
"It's of Lorien, the same that the hobbits carry." Aragorn continued. "I think that it was not lost idly, but cast for the finding."  
  
"So Pippin is alive, and wits too." Gimli grunted. "Tis heartening; least we have not been running idly."  
  
"We should continue then, while they are still close and herded like cattle," said Legolas quietly.  
  
They ran on, till the morning faded into noon, and noon into night. Against the will of Legolas, it was decided to rest the night instead of searching in the dark in fear of losing the trail completely.  
  
Legolas had the first watch. He often did, as at the end of the day he was often still restless, and the period of vigilance seemed to ease his nerves. He never confirmed this, and no one asked.  
  
He sat in the tall grass on a rising overlooking the camp, his posture lax as he inserted the feathers into the end of new arrows.  
  
He fiddled with the wax on his fingers, watching it as the amber color turned lighter over the whorls and lines on his fingertips. His head jerked up and looked south, his posture still slouched and his fingers still slowly sliding wax covered against each other.  
  
His eyes swept the undulating plains, the continuous sea of endless grass, the shadows the moonlight cast in the swells and risings, the myriads of green and yellow that made the back on one's throat ache with the similarities and contrasts of two simple colors.  
  
His hand rose to push back his hair absently even though it was all tied and laid back already. His hand lingered on the left side, pressing his index finger along a strip.  
  
His eyes looking desperately, with embarrassment and rejection to the to the sky at the right, the clouds opening in slight places to show faint eddies of stars. His eyes traveled down to the horizon, to the east.  
  
Aragorn breathed gently in the west.  
  
Legolas' lips tightened at the corners, and drew his hand away. He hesitated then, the muscles beneath his eyes twitching slightly, and moved his hand back to his hair and pulled a strand out.  
  
He pulled it through his index and middle finger, watching the strand as it fell back to his face, the tip level with the corner of his mouth. He stared at the pale yellow strand, his eyes crossing in the effort, caressing the length gently between his index and thumb as they slid slowly down to the tip. He twirled the bit thoughtfully around his finger, the wax making the hair stay curled even after he drew his hand away.  
  
His hand fell down in one straight movement, instead of falling at an angle as it usually did, the tips lisping over his neck and the hem of his tunic before rubbing the rest of the wax on the end of an arrow almost murderously, stabbing the feathers viciously into place.  
  
He sighed silently, his shoulders rising and falling as his posture slackened to the point of painful. He brushed the strand behind an ear.  
  
Strangely, his breathing reminded him of trees. Each inhale was a year, a new circle around the origin, the wet ash colored bark flecked with cracks of gray were the true color of the tree showed through. The bark would grow hard and scaly, monstrous, before breaking off to show the softer, cleaner bark underneath, the tree a majestic redwood or oak, a lord of the forest.  
  
The sound was relaxing, had an echo quality to it. Antiquated. Before time. Before memory. The raspy, deep baritone, a comfortable charcoal color with phantasmal wisps of ash twisting in the breeze.  
  
Yes, the breathing said, I have seen the world. It has yet to destroy me. I have yet to be conquered. I am strong. I am grand. I am Aragorn.  
  
Legolas did not move for many hours more. He managed to finish one more arrow, and begin on a second, but no further. He kept pausing for long moments in between. A few hours after his shift was ended, he walked to the west.  
  
He stood over Aragorn silently, watching him breathe. His ivory face showed no more emotion than it normally did, but his eyes were hooded. He started to breathe in symphony with the human without knowing it.  
  
He sighed. Slowly, smoothly, he crouched down by the man's side, looking at the floor in front of the other man's torso instead of his face and perhaps not even seeing him then, ignoring him completely. Slowly, reluctantly, Legolas stretched out his hand to the other's shoulder, and yanked it back. His throat worked, but his mouth did not open.  
  
He retook his seat on the mound and stared up at the sky.  
  
Aragorn awoke on his own, the slight stirring in the atmosphere awakening his subconscious, which awoke the rest of him. He rose, and looked to where Legolas sat still, staring at the stars with a half-finished arrow in his hands.  
  
"You were supposed to wake me."  
  
Legolas slid to standing silently without facing Aragorn, turned to the east and laid his blanket down near to Gimli, and sat down on it, laying the unfinished arrow to one side. His eyes faded out of focus gradually, then he slid bonelessly to horizontal with his hands rising to cross his chest.  
  
He vaguely resembled the arrows he wielded lethally. His ears came to their delicate sharp points, designed for accuracy and exuding elegance, uniqueness. The ivory paleness seemed alien and out of place among a place with so much wide space and bright days. The clerk was still visible under all that dirt and scratches, a paradox and mystery wrapped up in one deliciously tempting tunic and leggings. Damn. Perhaps what made his so mind-boggling erotic was his genuine innocence, his studious bearing and manners. The man would apologize to goblins for cutting their necks if he had the time. He was so nice! To everything. It was irritating. No one should be that nice and be living, it went against Nature.  
  
His slim form spoke of tranquility, lying on the ground like that. His legs, so very long, stretched out, long…and slim…not bony or brawny, just very strong with a lithe strength…and very, very nice. Yes. Yeah…nice legs, no question. Right down to his feet, which did not sink in snow, giving all other walkers a perfect view of his legs, dashing to and fro, scissoring and bending, the calf muscles contracting and relaxing, and you couldn't really see much of his thighs, but what you could see made up for a lot of that.  
  
Not that anybody had really been looking, or anything.  
  
The faint starlight shining from the sky and bouncing off the plains created a reflection in Legolas' eyes; an odd striped combination of white starlight and flaxen shadows, with a dark blue-grey void between them. The diagonal lines of his hands added energy and vitality to the tranquil form.  
  
Aragorn crept down from the mound, a dark shadow moving deliberately. Aragorn studied the face, taking in the slender and sharp nose, sienna eyebrows, ivory skin. With practice he moved his hand over the visage, fingers extended gingerly, close enough that three individual hairs in the collective strand moved in the current.  
  
He stopped his movements slowly, and stared into the eyes he never dared look at while they were awake. The pale lips were parted marginally in the middle. His fingers deviated from their slow trek to the thin tender flesh. The tip of Aragorn's own tongue darted briefly out, tipped the center of his top lip. His tongue vanished, and he swallowed, his Adam apple bobbing. He breathed out heavily, shook his arm and leaned closer.  
  
When he moved again, the blue in the eyes twinkled. Aragorn eyebrows pulled together, his eyes narrowed and calculated.  
  
With unerring certainty sensors moved to strand, fingers in a pincer movement…and smacked the nose below the strand, hitting the bone and turning the skin a light conch pink.  
  
Things moved quickly, at the same time.  
  
The eyes widened till a thin sliver of white surrounded the irises, the edges of the man's lips turned into a smile while his eyes flickered, a cold thumb clamped over the back of Aragorn's wrist and the side of the hand pushed his palm up, threatening to snap the bone, and yanked Aragorn's hand over the elf's chest, pushing him slightly off balance.  
  
A pause less than a second, which was all that was needed.  
  
The dark circles under Aragorn's eyes twitched inward once. The tips of his fingers flexed inwards once. Legolas' left hand moved up to cover his face, Aragorn shifted his weight onto his right elbow that was centered in the Elf's chest so his arm could realign itself more and lessen the pain. His left arm snaked between their bodies, clasping the Elf's left hand by his face, in sight.  
  
The struggle was between elfin strength and Human strength. Gravity and weight played a hand. Their arms crossed their bodies, one of Aragorn's arms in obvious pain while his other arm supported his weight on top of the elf's chest and held down his other hand.  
  
By degrees, Aragorn pushed down on the elf's left hand until it rested 5 cm from his shoulder, trembling.  
  
Through a tight, yet low voice, eyes murky from control, Legolas said, "Get, off."  
  
Aragorn's eyes by contrast stayed moody, emotions oozing in the depths but covered by restraint. Dark hair, with a hint of grey, stayed at an angle to the ground, though the owner looked straight down at the Elf. He had not shaved for some time, his fingers spotted with dirt and calluses, his chest a foot away from the Elf's and his torso anywhere from 5 to 3 inches away from the other's hip, as he was breathing heavier than he seemed. He was looking to the Elf's face for the first time in many nights.  
  
He smiled grimly.  
  
In a raspy baritone, he said, "Play with your hair all you wish, but don't play with me."  
  
The Elf gave what could have been called a snort but sounded like a sigh. "You came to me", he pointed out.  
  
The Man's eyes lost what calm they had, narrowed, and murderous and intense hues darted and flew in them. His face did not lose its smile, though his left fingers did curl in tighter, while in reaction the Elf's right hand pushed Aragorn's wrist back to nearly a 90-degree angle. Aragorn's shoulder twitched.  
  
"Now get off." Legolas inhaled, and said, "Please."  
  
The Elf's voice did not indicate begging, or even heighten in pain. He was merely being polite.  
  
A pause of five seconds, a searching of eyes, testing of nerves, of questioning. I really hate him.  
  
Aragorn's left hand uncurled a little, though it still held the other down. The Elf's right fingers blurred; his hand now gripped around his wrist. Aragorn's shoulder relaxed, and the grimness left his face, as did the mocking smile. The tension resumed, but at a lower degree.  
  
"Well," the human drawled, "then you're gonna to 'ave to let go."  
  
By mutual agreement, Legolas pushed Aragorn's arms up and left, releasing them, while Aragorn rocked his weight back and stood while Legolas' hand was still in the air. His left arm went back to the left, and lowered to his side. Aragorn turned.  
  
"Do something about that hair," Aragorn shot in parting. "Can't shoot if you can't see." He turned his back and shut the elf out, turned, and started drifting away.  
  
Legolas turned his face away, hooded his eyes, the wheels in his head turning. Then he bit. Or nipped. Quietly and politely, of course.  
  
"I suppose that is how you found Pippin's brooch."  
  
Aragorn spun around quickly, perhaps too quickly. He tilted his body back in hesitation so that his side faced Legolas. The muscles in his thighs fidgeted, and his feet almost turned back to the mound.  
  
His eyes focused not on Legolas' face, but on his elbow, and shrugged.  
  
"That was luck. Don't blame yourself."  
  
"Who said did I?" came the curt reply, coupled with the Elf's head tilting back towards Aragorn, one eyebrow arched and his chin at an angle. His eyes stayed on the ground.  
  
Aragorn blinked, and one knee bent awkwardly to put his foot farther back and closer to the mound, where the only companions and peers were the stars.  
  
"I meant, do not trouble yourself for it. It was nothing special."  
  
Legolas tilted his head in the other direction, considering the statement.  
  
"No?" the elf questioned. He was quiet a bit. "No, I suppose it wasn't." Legolas said thoughtfully, condescendingly. "Good night." Legolas became horizontal in a sleek movement that Aragorn's eyes couldn't follow, let alone copy. He stood glaring at Legolas a moment longer than appropriate, before returning to the mound. 


	7. Dwarves

Gimli is, by far, turning out to be my favorite character. Experimenting with accents and other slang terms, not really sure if they're all accurate but they sure are fun. I give you Gimli's POV.  
  
  
  
  
  
Bunch of bloody idiots, that's what they are. Nuthin' but a bunch of bloody blind fluttering fools, who shoulda ne'er been allowed anywhere near a weapon 'til they were able to control their goddamned weasels and whatnot.  
  
The Man's too busy flittering around like some God awful smoke-stench ta see with them bloody "far-seeing" eyes that them bunch of Dunedain are so damn bloody proud of ta see that the damn elf wants him just as bad, he's just too stupid ta realize it. Hah! Stupid elf. All elves are they were the dimmest of idiots. Always said ne'er trust 'em, they're too bloody thick and flittery. If he wasn't so bloody elfish he'd know what he was wantin', the dolt.  
  
Don't think the youngsters ever been in love before, wouldn't surprise me a bit for all their jabber about wisdom and lore and immortality and all that fiddle-faddle. They're ridiculous ta see though, somethin' mighty humorous. Makes ye wake in the morn and say, "Damn. Ano'er day wit them fools, and damned iffen they're in charge too." Hells though, they're always good fer a laugh, them stupid elves.  
  
With the Ranger stomping around like his feet are nailed to the ground because he's so bloody worried that he might trip and "fall" on the blondie and make like dogs in heat faster than a rockslide of slate.  
  
And all elves really are so bloody indecisive no madder whot's goin' on, I really feel quite sorry fer th' other guy. E'en trolls think faster than them idiots ta make a stand, and that's saying somethin' mighty grand, that.  
  
Nay, the damned elf won't do nary a thing. Nay, 'e'll walk around like nothin's the madder singing 'is little songs then sulk and sigh when 'e's alone like some godawful human gel, and moan those god awful damned poetry that only Elves could think of, much less have the gall to sing them.  
  
Elves are alright, in their own way, sometimes, and only a coupla of 'em, but their bloody songs and poems and god awful ballads could melt the teeth offa deep troll, the kind made outta granite 'stead o' the slate ones ye be gettin' now. The Lady Galadriel is different now though, she knows us dwarves, and her singin' ain't half bad. Respectable lady, very much so.  
  
Us dwarves now, us dwarves don't bother don't bother with all that nonsense and flitterin'. When we find someone we wants, we marry them or we don't marry atall. E'er. Stick to our words and hearts and axes we do, better then anybody else, if I do say so.  
  
I swear, I've gotta good mind ta tie those two bloody idiots together in the woods and leave 'em there 'till they make up their bloody minds or tear each other to pieces.  
  
Bloody idiots. 


	8. Discussing

Ack.  Sorry haven't been updating in a while, I'm sort of losing track of the story, so I'm rebuilding it too while I'm going along.  Um…hopefully another update within the next 24-48 hours, um, maybe.  Thank you all the people who are reviewing, I think I'm falling in love with you guys!  

Um,…right.  That didn't completely sound right, but anyway.

Setting:

This section takes place after the Company has met Eomer, one of the Rohan people, and gotten horses from him 20 cents per the hour.  Aragorn paid.  As of now, they are in the Fangorn Forest, still looking for Merry and Pippin.

He picked up another stick of wood, turned it over and examined with the quiet and cordial intensity that he did everything else.  They were having fire again for the first time in a long spell, partly at Gimli's insistence and partly--to him at least--to regain some semblance of normality.  

The hobbits were free yet again, or so Aragorn believed, so they might well be whole and hale, so they may yet return to the group and be a true Company yet again…or they might not.  They were free, and likely alive, still.  The shadow seemed to be lifting yet.

Gimli coughed.

"So, um, 'ow th' hells long do ye 'tend to be dancing with 'im anyway?  Ah've gotten bloomin' _diamonds_ out faster than it takes you two to end a row, e'en much faster ta _start_ the tawdry thing."

"I beg your pardon, Master Dwarf?"

"Well, for th' first it shouldenna be I ya should be a beggin', not tha' I'm a tellin' ye not to.  Far be _my_ place to tell an Elf wot ta do.  Or so I've been told.  Often.  More 'en often really.  Repeatedly.  Ta tha' bloody point of bein'-"

"You were saying, Master Dwarf?"

"Wot?  Ah, yeah.  I ain't bloody blind, Legolas"—the other paused at the use of the other's name.  Elves were sensitive about their names, and rarely gave their true ones freely.  

Even the alias of 'Legolas' held some meaning.  Legolas stopped walking and scanning the area and turned slowly towards Gimli, his face receptive yet cold, his eyes somber and ever so slightly cautious, and the tiniest of the sliver hostile.

"Oh?"

"No.  No, elf, an' neither are ye.  Now, I won't pretend ta know wot's goin' on between ye two, but I've got the idea.  Secrets aren't the way ta do things, I don't hold wit' them, an' I don't think ye shouldda be either.  Nothin' good ne'er came of 'em mate, as it is, it's tearing ye apart an' don't think I don't know, it's tearing him up too.  An' I'll be damned iffen ye dinna be knowin' _that_."

Legolas' brow furrowed momentarily while he sorted out the other's point, the skin along the top of his neck warming and chilling as he realized the issue.

"I…cannot help, but doubt that, Master Dwarf.  No offense intended, but—"

"Dinnye go saying _nay_, elf-- 'cuase yer _gonna_ do somethin' about it or _I_ am, an' ye dinna want that, let me tell ye.  Still yet I've got a whole good length of twine left from Lothlorien, an' iffen ye dinna do anything I _SWEAR_ I really _WILL_ tie ya both up an' go on this trip my own, see if I won't, Gods know I'm better off then takin' care of you two because iffen I have to deal with one _more_ bloke waking me up in the _middle_ o' the _Godblessed_ night someone's gonna end up two feet _shorter_ inna mornin' an' that's that.   Weel?  Do ye ken me?"

….

"Yes.  Yes, I rather think I do, Master Dwarf."

"Aye.  Well 'en.  Good on ye.  Let's back to work."

*****

The horses had run from them the night prior, despite the point that their tresses were tied.  This had left Aragorn in a sore mood; he had promised to return them, and Gondor would certainly need martial aid from the Rohan.  

Out_standing_.  

They had seen a figure in white wafting around the temporary camp as well.  So they were discovered and caught off guard.  Had the figure waited a while longer, he could have escaped with not only their horses, but their lives as well.  And they would have _NEVER_ known it, so relaxed was their defense.

Great.  

This was the time Legolas decided to approach him.

"Advice from _Gimli_?  And since when, pray, Master _Elf_, did you start taking advice from a _dwarf_?"  

Aragorn sounded more amused and condescending than alarmed, smirking aggressively at the elf's invisible discomfort and attempt.  He made certain to put emphasis on the racial differences between the two, for while did not understand the goal of racism, he knew it bothered the hell out of the elf.  Or it used to.

"Since the dwarf became the most sensible person within range, sir."

Blink.  Recover.

"So what do you want?"

"To talk."

********

Knives flashed in the dull lemon pallor of the sunlight.  Aragorn was slowly moving into defensive, not using the recklessness and chaos that was the best human weapon against Elves.  Legolas feinted with his knife, punched Aragorn in the gut with his opposite hand and scored a gash on the soft and thin inside of his left elbow.  The sweat stung the wound. 

Superficial, but in a delicate area, distracting the Man a second long enough for Legolas to tackle and have him pinned on the leaves and dirt.  One knee and dagger-holding fist held Aragorn's sword arm down to one side.

His other hand held the injured arm lightly under the gash, which was bleeding profusely.  Blood already stained the side of the Elf's hands.  The Elf's last knee was situated between the man's legs, holding up the remainder of his weight.

The Man wasn't a pretty sight.  His shaggy hair was mussed more than ever, pieces of leaves and dirt altering the overall shade.  His eyes were narrowed dangerously, dull and angry, teeth, lightly tinged with yellow, bared.  His breathing was actually rather slow and constrained, and even through his tanned bronze skin a flush painted his angular cheeks.  

Legolas looked once directly into the eyes of the human, and something internal twitched.  He glanced away briefly then refocused on the other's forehead.  There was red mark on the left side of one temple.  He did not remember that.  He blinked.

Aragorn took the opportunity, and snatched his cut arm away and out to shove a punch into the small hollow of the Elf's right eye.  The Elf arched up momentarily with the impact, leaving his chest and stomach exposed and open.  The Man did not take this opportunity; he was grimacing, and curling his left arm bent stiffly towards his chest.  

Legolas curled back down, Aragorn angled his arm up, the elbow catching the elf under his chin, the elf's momentum causing his head snapped back up again.  A lengthy expanse of neck was shone, and appeared for a minute to be on the edge of snapping.  

Then the Elf's right hand caught his arm at the point and slammed it down and away from the Man, leaning what weight he could onto it.

Eyes met for a moment, rough, unsaid volleys were traded, weight and strength were measured and tested, and Aragorn jerked his knee into the elf's arse.  The Elf came toppling forward bare inches from crashing into the human, surprise and pain chipping the glass behind his eyes.  Aragorn saw this; his eyes widened and his lips splitting.

The Elf wasn't a pretty sight either.  Dirt lay dry on his chin while an onrush of capillaries colored the area around his eye and chin a full bright red flecked with dirt.  His face had gone unusually pale, making his eyelashes and lips stand out strong in red and sienna.  

Yellow ash strands of hair were thinly scattered across his face, the rest, even after the rough-and-tumble, still hung straight and smooth, creating a curtain from his shoulders.  His eyes were dark storms, swirling dark and light gray, with a tinge of blue speckled here and there.  

His lips were the highlight of his face, painted obscenely and hideously bright from the rush of blood.  Between them were his blatantly white, almost fluorescent teeth, which extenuated the unnatural coloring of his lips, which were slightly curled back but restrained from outright snarling.  His canines appeared longer than a human's, and this combined with his aloof attitude, gave the impression of a cat.

Aragorn took this in quickly, still baring his own off-white dull teeth, narrowed his eyes and stopped thinking.  

He lifted himself up by the neck to brush his cheek against the other's, and pursed his lips and blew air in the other's ear.

Legolas' neck and back snapped to become exactly aligned sharper than a pocketknife, his face went paler than white-an odd sickly gray-for a few seconds, but he did not move further.  Legolas did not move or relax.

Aragorn's eyes were half closed, staying that way even after he had pulled away, then drew his arm free.

Aragorn's eyes opened full.  And he punched him.  Hard.  Solidly executed, on the left side of the chest a streamlined concentrated and hard punch.  Hard enough to send Legolas off of Aragorn and on his arse to the side, still within kicking distance.  

Both scrambled to their feet, but refrained from coming together again.  Legolas favored his left side, while Aragorn was still ready to fight with sword in hand.  The cold cordiality lay in tatters; Legolas' true emotions of intensity and quiet yet steadily growing anger slid just beneath the surface.

He darted in again, Aragorn dropped his sword, and blows were again exchanged.  Legolas fell.  He squeezed his abdomen briefly with one hand, then made his way to his feet keeping his eyes to the ground. 

Aragorn's lip was split and bleeding, one eye half closed and reddened, and one ear bruised and hopefully (thought Legolas) ringing.  Not that one would know or see, with the amount of mangy fur (thought Legolas) that crawled and covered over the other's face.

"That's how _we_ win fights."

"Tis' dishonorable."  Legolas was upset.  He did not completely feel like speaking.  He did completely feel like painting the remainder of Aragorn's smirking eyes black and purple.

"So is winning, at least to the loser."  The damned aggressive smirk.

"That be _not_ contest of might or wills, or, or, or even strength even."  Legolas sounded more wild and frustrated than Aragorn had ever heard.  He gave a small affectionate smile at the other's stuttering.  Legolas was not looking at his face, but instead a point left of his elbow.  "That was simply…just…um…"

"Pushing the enemy off balance.  Confusing.  Fighting fair is all and good when the enemy is honorable, or at _least_ merciful.  Mordor's armies will be neither.  Get used to it."  Aragorn spoke like an instructor, warning the apprentice of what moves were correct and what were not.

"One does not defeat an enemy by becoming them."  Legolas spoke quietly, dangerously, and condemningly.  "Their tactics, and _weapons_," the word was dragged out, "are theirs, and loyal to _them_ alone.  They alone are fell and dark enough to wield them."  Legolas met Aragorn's eyes, hostile, challenging, and degradingly.  

"We will not become them, but we can use their tactics against them, they would do the same to us!  This isn't tale or ballad to be writ or lamented, people's lives will be _lost_ in this war, they will _die_," Aragorn emphasized, appearing for once to be distressed.  "And I will not allow it simply because methods clash with _your_ honor."

Legolas' eyes widened innocently, and he blinked twice.  A lucid man familiar with Elves would have ducked and started running.

"_My_ honor, Sir?  Or theirs?  Or mayhap _yours_, had you have any?" Legolas raised one eyebrow, his voice trembling teasingly between the soft undertone and a higher pitched screech.

Aragorn noticed this, opened his mouth, and closed it again.  He scowled.  The fire in his eyes died, and he dropped his stance.

"Forget it."

"Sir-" Legolas regained the control over his voice, still had one eyebrow lifted inquisitively, but his eyes had begun to hide themselves to avoid narrowing and openly scowling.

"It wasn't about _honor_, it's about the one's who—forget it."  Aragorn hung his head a moment, then turned and sheathed Anduril and started walking.  Legolas lifted both eyebrows and tilted his head to one side.  He thought for a moment.

"Neither have I desire to see people—"

Aragorn was out of earshot.

"--die.  But they shall.  All things die," and he said the other's name, softly, "thou shalt learn that, someday.  So be Iluvatar chosen price to live.  That, indeed, may even be the gift.  But I do not expect thee to ken.  Not of yet."

It was not till Aragorn was out of his sight did Legolas allow his arms to relax.  He picked up his knife from the ground.  The silver and metallic haft refracted the manila light.  His breathing slowed, mellowed, and he wiped his brow with the back of his hand.

A few moments later a pale salmonish pink streaked itself lightly along his angular cheeks and crawl, painstakingly slowly, tortuously slowly, up to the points of his ears.  Legolas turned his back away from the direction Aragorn had taken, and began to walk aimlessly.  

His facial expression trembled in its placid coolness.  The lost, startled and alarmed look never left his eyes, and with each step his mouth began to open, just a slit between the lips then a little more as the shock slowly let in.  

Ye gods.

Nay, the Valar, and Manwe, messenger god merciful, _please_, Elbereth in the heavens and night sky the star lit star bright sky, Lady of the Light and Stars Varda, oh _Gods, _deliver me _please deliver me dammit_

Legolas leaned suddenly against one of the ugly tree trunks that populated the area, his head cradled in his arm, his face shocked and mouth gaping, breath coming in frantic gasps, his hand coming up to touch his lips but stopping just short and trembling in air.  

And trembling harder in the thought-flying seconds.

A touch of Elven rationality and coolness touched him before the panic could evolve into hysteria.  His eyes darted to left side before sliding to the right as his mind listed all possible reasons that the…_spar_, had evolved into…what it did.  

His breathing became deeper, obviously controlled, his lips moving gently to put his put his thoughts into coherency while his hand continued to shake.

He blinked a couple times, straightening slowly, his arm still resting against the tree trunk that more or less supported him both physically and mentally,—

The day a tree forsakes a Silvan elf is an ill day indeed, and it was one of the few comforts he had.

-- the knuckles of his shaking hand twitching against the cracked and dying bark.  He turned his hand so that the fingertips pressed against the tree and shook less, then looked down and a miniscule frown appeared his brows as he continued to mouth words, and licked the inside of his upper lip.

And drew in the bottom lip in between his teeth, the frown easing out and blinked again, his face the Elven epitome of pensiveness and caution.  Then he groaned softly, painfully, and cradled his head back into his arm.  

He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together, running his tongue along the top lip while, his shaking hand coming up to push the hair away from his face and over his ear, stroking the keen bit of skin and groaning softly again in pleasure and pressing his head deeper into his arm as his hand stroked down his face, trying to wipe the burning skin off his body and away from him, far away from him where he wouldn't have to feel this bad.  

This badly.

"Valar…Valinador", he opened his eyes, his mouth cupped by his hand, "…deliver me.  Please."

He simply hoped Aragorn was having an equally trying time as well.

He had better _damned_ well be.

*****


	9. In the Bar

MY EMAIL CHANGED!!!  Isn't that electrifying?  Um, this is terribly embarrassing, please accept my most sincere apologies, but my story was ARCHIVED, somewhere, and, uh, well, I don't remember where.  Or whom.  I can remember web layout and the other stories and other categories, but not the NAME.  At all.  Very embarrassing.  I don't even have the original email anymore, because I can't access my old email.  It dislikes me.  So if, um, you're reading this, and this rings a bell, please email me.  It's gelfling8604@yahoo.com, just so everybody knows.

Quick update on setting: Gandalf is back and alive (spoiler), and he takes the Company to the Rohan city.  Is night there right now, and our heroes are spending the night.  This isn't anywhere in the book, but the _TIME_, for it to happen is there.  They're in a **CITY**.  That's important.

*****

Aragorn was missing.  Again.  Gimli was beginning to sense a trend.  Since the day that Aragorn had returned from his "discussion" with Legolas, bloodied and bruised, Gimli had kept quiet, and as far away from both as possible.  Aragorn had simply glared at the short member of the Company, and Gimli had glared back.  A short, sullen silence filled the air, and Gimli was itching for his ax in his hand, and not in his belt.  

All Aragorn had said was, "Stay out of it."  Gimli had not deigned to reply.  

He would not apologize, he was guilty of nothing, and if he did say something it would be less than humble, and the dwarf had no desire to fight either member of the Company.  He wouldn't mind a good brawl; something to clear the air and pummel some sense and respect into each other like he used to back home, but that wouldn't work here.  He really was in a foreign land, with foreigners he _had_ thought he understood.  But nothing normal worked here. 

Why Legolas was so infatuated with the surly and silent Ranger and vice versa was something Gimli did not, would not even _try_ to understand.

Legolas would not speak with him, would not even return the dwarf's questioning glances.  It was even worse than Aragorn's callousness.  Then there was that woman.  She was pretty enough, and royalty, a member of Theoden's court, and their hostess.  Not quite as pretty or gracious as the Lady Galadriel, but pretty enough.  Pretty enough to catch Aragorn's eye, and he her own.  

She had watched him throughout dinner, refilled his cup when he emptied it, and met his eyes when he looked back at her.  Legolas had bent two spoons and one knife without realizing until he looked at the utensil or Gimli had nudged him.  He had not even realized his hand was bleeding from the blade until Gimli had hissed and glared at him.  Legolas had kept his head bent and eyes down after that, and ate with his left hand.

After he had seen where Theoden had lodged him for the night and perused the room, thanked every god he knew for the walls and roofs and pushed the wardrobe in front of the windows to keep as much light out as possible.  If the air would only have been a bit stiller and dead, he could almost feel his father's mines.  

Legolas was not in his room when Gimli went to check, nor was he after nightfall.  When Gimli found him again at around ten at night in his guest quarters the Elf had been sharpening his knives with a single-minded intensity that vampire would have been envious of. 

Scrape, scrape, turn, slide up-down twice doubled, then scrape scrape, turn and repeat.

"Aye, Elf!  Where in the 'ells is that bloke?  'E said 'e was gonna be right aroun' 'ere but, wouldenna ya be guessin', took off in the next third secon' nobody was lookin'."

Scrape slide, crosswise scrape pushing into the metal along the edge, pushing out the dents, making the edges ever sharper, ever thinner, ever sleeker.  

"Aye, Elf?  'Ave ya seen 'im?  Aye, I'm talkin' ta ye!  Elf?  Didja go deaf, with those two huge buggers on the-"  
  


"Go away."

"Um.  Somethin'…look, maybe it didn't work, an' maybe I am sorry, not sayin' I am, butcha gotta know lad if somethin' t'were ta happen ta 'im then-"

"Gimli."

"Yeah?"

"Be quiet."

"Weeel, all right, if you're sure."

Gimli went to bed after that.  He pumped up the fireplace as scorching as a blacksmith's furnace, and dragged the blankets off of the bed, and after some serious thinking stole two of the pillows as well, and went to sleep underneath the bed.  The roof was _much_ closer that way, and far more comforting.  Legolas woke him up after midnight by poking at his nose.

"Did you find him?"

"Aye?  Oh, elf, it's ye, for a minute I was thinkin' that-"

"Did you find him?"

"Eh?  Ah.  Ahhhh…no.  Nay, I didna, but I wouldna fret overit, Aragorn's a grown man, an' a Ranger tas well, so I'd be well enough thinkin' he'd could take care o' himself well enough, seein' 'ow 'e _did_ nearly take us through here and there and all o' Fangorn on his own, so there isn't tanythin' ta be worryin' over."

Legolas had blinked at Gimli, his blond hair spilling on the floor, his weight supported on his hands on the floor.  He had nodded his thanks, then stood and walked silently out.  Gimli stayed awake a bit longer, then pulled the covers up higher and fell asleep.

*****

Legolas found Aragorn in a bar, after searching the House, the stables, the kitchen, and the Lady Eowyn's quarters as well.  

He hadn't actually entered, but had simply…glanced in discreetly, and listened with all the patience and skill he had been born with and learned.  He was gratified and relieved that the Lady slept alone, and had blushed furiously.  He didn't like what he was thinking, he hated, no, _loathed_, what he was feeling…but that didn't stop him from doing either.

He had escaped into the town, avoiding everyone with eyes at the cost of walking and jumping across the roofs, hanging on the walls and hiding in the shadows.

He sat down next to Aragorn silently in the empty bar, the smell of beer and salt ingrained even in the wood of the table.  The bar was empty of even a keeper, Aragorn the only customer.  Legolas had almost not recognized, but his eyes caught the ivory handle of Anduril in the morose darkness.  The silence hung between them, until Aragorn spoke.

"Dooye e'er know why, um, nah, _wonder_…why werewolves are, um…sad.  Always.  An' orcs.  Too.  An' whyen we kill 'em?"  Aragorn slurred, the lines faint on his face.

"Because they are fell, Aragorn, and would kill us, given the chance."  Legolas answered patiently, as if to a child.

.

Aragorn frowned, his brain slowed, yet still definite.  "Errhmm."

Legolas sighed.  "Because they can derive no pleasure save from blood, most often our own", he stated quietly.

Aragorn grinned brightly.

"Exactly!  And 'cause they, um, 'hey want powher.  Ower us.  Any'hing.  Funny 'hing, power, ya know, because…" there was a pause, and a vacant stare.  " 'cuase…Nobody says no.  Ae'ing migh happen.  Aniythin' good, issall 'ventures and drink and good food _daaammmnn_ good food wi' jolly friends and wennn-ches all aroun' an' aboun' an' abou and aroun'..."  

Aragorn whirled his hand descriptively in the air; his arm following the motion and falling out of his chair to one side till Legolas pulled his seat back to the stool.

"That not be the true nature of life, Aragorn."  Aragorn didn't appear to hear.

"Powher.._Power_," here Aragorn said the word ardently, a theatrical tone entering his voice, "Power ken bring ya ae'ing, ih kin bring 'eedom, ih kin bring _joy_," here his voice lost it's edge and deep baritone, a raspy whisper replacing it, "ih kin _e'en_…it kin e'en bring ya…love, Legolas."  Aragorn voice had cracked at the word "love", and his fist clenched.  

Legolas fidgeted on his stool.

"Thou knows that not be-"

"_Anything_ Legolas… en' quiet up, oose tellin' 'his story, yer or I?  Aiway, that's wha' 'ey…_we_, Men, 'hink….Believe."

Pause.  Daze.

"Men kiv 'oney lives, elf."  Aragorn continued quietly.  "Wehrall rivals, issall enemies, all fightin' fer dat pohwer, 'at joy zhat comes in gold and blood tha' weone bother ta make erown joy."  

Legolas opened his mouth.  Aragorn waved him away.  

"We don't 'ike each other.  Trust me.  I've known….hhhhundredssss," he waved one arm in a circle, "Men from e'erywhere on Middle Earth, Men from 'orodwaith inna north ta Harondor and Rhun to Wessern Forlindon.  We don 'ike each other, an' we don' like ta share.  Hobbits are some'hin' now, now, theys do love each ohher somemow, an'…they make their own joy.  They are very smart."  Aragorn nodded sagely.

"You,…you elves are differ..din….Elves.  Yeah.  You stick toge'her, e'en when you don't like each other, 'cause zhat's what you are.  Tha's whatchu do."  Aragorn's gaze wavered and drifted to the counter.  "'cuase sere's so little of you left anyway, and dwarves…well, they…stick…_dwarves_.  Yeah.  They are."  Confusion crossed Aragorn's face, followed by attentiveness.

Legolas raised his eyebrows, his eyelids demurely lowered while his turned downcast to the bar, and one corner of his mouth twitched up once.  The other joined it, into one of the few smiles that he had given in three months.  His eyes softened.  

Aragorn sniffed through his nose, and swirled his drink around again in his hand.  He did that often when he was nervous, or thinking.

"I'ss lonely.  Bein' human.  I'soo lonely."

Thus dropped the rock.  

"Someone ahways wants what you got, e'en iffen 'snothing, because we wan' more.  We wan' that power.  We wan' that love.  It's cold, and weak…and getting weaker everyday."  

He took a drink.  

"Gandalf was wrong.  Old boy.  King of men…no.  Not me.  Nothing short of a miracle, that one.  Like wolves, we are…looking fer the light…looking for _hope_, yeah, ahways, taking but we know we shouldn't…just for a little while.  Just a little while." Aragorn said again, moving the mug to his lips.  

He rasped, softly, so soft the words almost ran together into drivel, "It would be so much colder, if we didn't.  Much, much colder.  You couldn't believe.  Never."

"This weakness, _this_…this keeps us going…we'd die, if we didn't give in, once in a while.  Gives us strength, our weakness.  Yeah.  See… bottles there."  

Aragorn pointed at a empty space on the counter, but Legolas could see knocked down bottles around it and on the ground.  

"Shouldn't have had 'em.  Nope.  Nononono…No.  Trying to find joy, trying to…drink the world away.  Yup…Not real, this peace," Aragorn smiled softly, sadly, yet not bitter.  "No…It'll leave.  Always," he whispered quietly.

"It's too good, too good for me, too good to hold, to…to stay."  Aragorn face became blank, thoughtful.  

"But, even though I don't _have_ it…Even though, it's not, _mine_," Aragorn lingered on the word, breathing life into the syllables, "even though…all _that_…I'll miss it, still, when it goes.  Like you."

"I shalt not leave.  Not without you."

"You will.  You will.  Ah, yes."  Blood shot eyes grinned at the counter.  

"I'm in love with you."  Honest eyes seeped onto the blotched counter, trailing emotions through the stale beer and dust, edging closer to the other's elbow.  "Shouldn't have.  Shouldn't _be_.  But I'll miss you, when you go.  An' you're not even _mine_."  

Aragorn gave a light chuckle coated in a moan.

"Feel sorry for you….No matter what happens, even if we win the Ring and beat Sauron or lose, lose it all, all…No matter what, _I_ won't see it.  Not all.  I won't _know_."  

Aragorn sipped from his mug.

"I'll die, you know…and I won't be thinking 'What if I did…'.an'  'What if I'd gone...'.  an' whatever and all.  What if, what if…and you'll hear that _all_ your life.  Yup.  Youuu, _bugger_.  And I'll be dead.  Poor bastard."

Aragorn turned to look at him, his eyes bright and direct, and a bright, drunk smile on his face.

"Just like the orcs."  

There was a dangerously feverish, awkward pause.  Aragorn smiled faintly, and slowly revolved his head back to the counter, giving the elf his profile.  He threw back the pint and his head, his throat working as it swallowed the liquid down.

"Thou art a very merry person when thy drinks, Aragorn."

Aragorn did not even blink, might not even heard the words, and dropped his head down to his chest, his jagged dark hair effectively covering his face, the tanned column of his neck visible, yet pale against his shirt.  

Then he laughed, loud and offensive, the sound shattering the sacred silence that had blanked the bar.  Legolas jumped on his seat, his mouth opened awkwardly.  

Aragorn's sides heaved, he clutched both sides of the counter and his laughter bordered on hysteria and madness, his body convulsing as he lowered his head under the counter and gasped for breath while he continued to chortle.  

When Legolas sat back down his cheeks were painted a light peach color, before paling and his mouth closed and his lips set themselves into a thin line.  His voice turned cold, flat.

"We _will_ go now, Aragorn," he said, stretching the '_will'_.  "We have dallied in this foolishness long enough, you agree?"

"Why?"  Aragorn laughed, "So we kin go back ta th' same damn folly out there?"  He giggled, and poured himself more ale from one of the two upright bottles on the counter.  Legolas' eyes followed the flow, and he grew colder.  His voice turned deadly soft.

"It be not folly, and thee know it." Legolas' shoulders squared and his voice grew firmer, but still soft.  "Time enough to end this self-pity, this disgraceful image.  Come, there are others out there worth more than that drink you cradle now.  What of Gandalf, and Boromir?  What of the hobbits, of Frodo?  What of Gondor, Aragorn, what of the Ring?"

"Speak not to me of the Ring, _Elf_, I know that fine enough!" Aragorn shouted back, anger boiling off in alcoholic draughts rising out of his seat and swinging towards the Elf.  Their leggings touched, and the air between them sizzled.

The fog burned from Aragorn's eyes, the blood and lineage of the Numerons visible for the first time since the counsel of Elrond and meeting Eomer.  His eyes smoldered, his cheeks were flushed from the ale and his face gaunt from everything in general. 

"Of _that_…I know." He stated softly, dangerously.  Even drunk, a Ranger is still dangerous, sometimes more so.  Aragorn tottered side to side, then sat down again on his stool.  His eyes were still hostile, but the anger drained slowly from his muscles.

"Of that…I know indeed."  He whispered again, and stared moodily across the counter.  "Too well."  He sighed deeply, and swirled the content of his mug.  He pursed his lips, and drew in a deep, calming breath.  Legolas shifted in his seat, turned halfway to the counter and raised his chin.

"So you see, that's the difference.  The big difference.  You Elves are so different, so,…beautiful," he turned on his stool, tore one hand off the mug, and which glided across the void that separated them, hovering anxiously in the air between.  

Legolas' hand crept on to his thigh.

"So very," Aragorn's hand reached level with the other's face, but did not touch it or come closer.  Legolas' calculating eyes burned into the appendage, while his ivory fingers lighted faintly on the knife handle in his belt.

"Very, beautiful." 

The grubby fingers ghosted on the white cheekbone, blood shot eyes resigned and despairing met the startled and meticulous gray eyes. 

The Elf had one foot behind the chair and the other on the floor; fingertips curled slightly on the handle of his knife and his other hand on the edge of the counter.  If need proved, he could dash back quickly or he could slice the other's hand off.  He didn't flinch away from the other's proximity, and his face was carefully blank while his eyes were wide, and emotions raged.

Yet his neck inclined gently.

The smile died gently on Aragorn's face, the fragile cheerfulness that the drink had painted on his face eroded.  He stopped moving completely; even his chest refused to quiver now.  He blinked once, twice, into the Elf's eyes, the glaciers of thought in his mind sliding towards collision.

His wrist moved lethargically, deliberately up and closer, while the Elf's eyes continued to burn into him with murderous intensity.  Legolas drew himself up, dignity and pride emanating.  Yet he did not move back, nor away.  

The pads touched tenuously, gentle as a butterfly's heartbeat, the sensitive skin below the eye, before sliding slowly, thoughtfully, down the pronounced cheekbones, stopping a few inches before the other's mouth.

Aragorn swallowed, his eyes never leaving his hand and the surface that they defiled.  Legolas' rib cage rose up and out of his chest; his hand tightened at the hilt of his knife.

"I would have thee as my own…if I knew, but why…"

Aragorn's lips moved silently, his fingers applying the slightest more pressure, not yet even pressing against the other's skin, but resting beside it.

"What?" fell the whisper off Legolas' lips.

Aragorn's fingers fell back to his side.

"Why what?" Legolas demanded louder.

"But all."  Aragorn looked once again into Legolas eyes, before his gaze drifted to the other's lips.  "Angel," he whispered, his eyes going out of focus on what they saw and instead focused on his mind, and what was going on internally.  He was gone.  A million miles away.

"Thou art drunk."

Aragorn shrugged.

"Come.  We shall leave."

Aragorn shrugged again.  Legolas guided him, gingerly, by the arm and out of the bar.  He left some coins on the counter.


	10. In the Rain

Standard Disclaimer: Not mines, no sue, if were mines they'd be doing this in the movie, or at least touching more and showing more skin. Must apologize for attempt at humor in the disclaimer 2 chapters back, just read it a while ago and thought, "Damn. What was I thinking, that doesn't even make SENSE??"  
  
Welcome. This bit has lime.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He awoke to a gentle yet insistent tapping on his shoulder.  
  
"I beg your pardon sir, but I'm looking for someone. Perhaps you've seen him?"  
  
The man sitting curled in the street blinked, and squinted his eyes, before a surprised grin surfaced on his face.  
  
"Oy, per'aps I have, my bonny boy, per'aps I have."  
  
The grin on the man's face widened, and he shot a fist towards the inquisitor's face.  
  
A few flurried moments and sharp sounds later, the shorter man lay on his side clutching his stomach, legs curled up to protect as much as his chest as they could and trying to hide his face. The figure above coughed.  
  
"The one I seek is of near my height, with, um, blue eyes one might say. He be not resident here and I thought mayhap." the voice trailed off.  
  
The man on the floor eased on finger from his abdomen, pointed up, and then jerked left. "Oh." Legolas stared down the prescribed direction, seeing much further than normal human ability. "Thank you."  
  
*****  
  
The auburn liquid swished in it's flask; Aragorn gave it a couple more turns in hopes of relieving the foul tasted that permeated the concoction. The Iilliad people had done much for Gondor in the past, and hopefully would do again, but they made terrible wine. Or ale, whatever they called the concoction.  
  
Fog rose a foot above the ground, a depressing burned gray, dotted by the continuous rain. The cold became sharper and more alive in the impending spring, the rain more frequent, and cut into the bones all that much quicker.  
  
Nothing matched the feeling of rain falling. The chill of the water, each droplet tapping on a different edge of his face, always a predictable surprise, before sliding down his shirt uncomfortably and cooling his freezing skin. No matter how cold or hard, the dead and ghosts alone could be unaffected by the chill and desolation of the rain. He was alone, where he wanted to be.  
  
The ale-wine?- swirled in his stomach, heating his blood and defrosting his skin, giving the rain a pleasant coolness instead of the chilliness of sobriety. His muscles and joints loosened, and his pinched nerves began to relax under the influence. The lines of the buildings and roofs began to blur, but that could also be the mist too.  
  
King Aragorn. Of Gondor. It was too late to take the words back now, after all his careful planning, all that running away.and here he was. Of course. He had lost, had failed entirely, and Destiny had won.  
  
He seemed to be innately good at failing lately; first he lost the Ringbearer, then he lost his heart to Legolas, and now he lost to Destiny. Wow. He was making one exceptional record for the scribes and clerks to record in their scrolls. Yes, those clerks, so immaculate and thorough, who never missed any little detail. Clerks indeed.  
  
He had declared his title before the Rohan, before the House of Theoden, and had walked into the White City.  
  
.his city.  
  
It was a shamble, a tomb, this place, compared to the majesty of Lorien and Imladris. The people were few and afraid, the buildings collapsing under their own weight, the stone itself developing mold. He had run so long.so far, and here he was.  
  
Now and again he observed dark specters hurrying through the rain and mist, hunched and silent. The proud people of Gondor, the last remains of the Dunedain. His people. His.  
  
As disparaging as they appeared, Aragorn couldn't help feel a touch of pride and protectiveness. His people lived on the edge of Mordor, were the first defense against the dark, and the few wraiths that darted quietly through the fog knew the danger that the darkness held, had buried the dead that had been murdered by monsters, yet did not run. They would not run. They were too proud to run. He was proud. He would learn this, if nothing else.  
  
At times.scars meant more than mere ugliness. More than mere carelessness, or worthlessness. More than mere greed. Sometimes they meant strength.  
  
He had not meant to come inside; he hadn't wanted to and still wished he had not, yet he had been curious. It made no difference whether he slept at his kingdom's doorstep or not.he was here. He needed to be here. And that could not be changed.  
  
Aragorn swirled his drink around yet again, and took another draught.  
  
Another ghost came into view while the liquid burned down his throat, passing from his vision only to return again and dart away. The ghost finally stopped and turned to Aragorn, and through the drink and cold and rain and quiet security, Aragorn's eyes met his long before knowing who he was.  
  
He moved like a wolf, with deliberate nonchalance, radiating power and muscle beneath the sleek frame. His eyes were brilliant, and gripped Aragorn's own with fierce.What? Purpose? Anger? Frustration? The face became clearer.  
  
Aragorn's jaw slackened, the flask in his hand feeling very heavy.  
  
The Elf's hair was pasted to his skin or hanging down on the sides of his face, his clothes likewise, giving him unusual delicacy and muscle, as his biceps and calf muscles became sharply defined.  
  
"Why are you here?" he asked, his voice empting out thin and translucent.  
  
A voice that could make the mountains melt. A voice that could freeze the rain motionless. A voice that was sharp, smooth, pale and shimmering, clear yet slightly thick and runny and a little bitter. Like a moonlit knife. Or knife made of moon light itself.  
  
Aragorn swallowed hard.  
  
The bottle dropped from his hand, bounced on the fog, and broke loudly on the flagstones.  
  
"Oh," Legolas said, his eyes and head tilted towards where the bottle had crashed. "I see." He frowned. "And to think Gimli was worried," Legolas said quietly to himself, his voice deadpan.  
  
"Well," one eyebrow lifted regally, his head tilted and showing a great deal of a glowing pallid column of neck, "Will thee be wanting anything more to drink?" he queried, dripping sarcasm.  
  
Aragorn jaw dropped open, his mouth worked silently and he coughed hurriedly. Legolas caught the motions, and twitched an eyebrow. Aragorn nodded.  
  
"Well," he sighed musically, wind through leaves, eyes lowered but bare in deference, "I. suppose it may be well. I don't approve," he looked up and frowned. Aragorn's face seemed glassy, and his eyes vacant. Legolas sighed, and whispered "but I shall I remain with thee. Come along."  
  
"Can I-"  
  
Aragorn closed his eyes briefly, his fingers flexing.  
  
"May--I have one now?"  
  
"Pardon?"  
  
"A drink. Now."  
  
"Where?" Legolas asked. They were in dank outskirts of the City; even the shoddiest of taverns and brothels were rare.  
  
"Here." He said firmly.  
  
"Here?"  
  
The rain pounded on harder, there was a soft plopping sound punctuated by short cracking. A roof had fallen in. "Um." Legolas' eyes flickered over to the area briefly, ears pricked. There were no voices or footsteps. "How?"  
  
Legolas turned back to Aragorn and blinked quickly, a droplet dislodged from his eyelashes, skimmed onto zenith of his cheekbones, zooming down the angular edges, sway tantalizingly from his jaw, snapping from suddenly and spattering onto his tunic where it zipped down the water soaked surface. It rode the dampness down, over the defined lines of muscle and collarbone and edges and abs, pooling on the rim of his belt. Aragorn's eyes bugged, and stayed glued on the spot, and the Elf shifted uneasily. The pool overflowed like a swan from a lake, spilling down onto his thigh before turning inward on his leg and disappearing behind his knee.  
  
"Aragorn?" he questioned, his voice a tip higher, shoulders tugged back and his weight supported on his left foot, so he could pivot and run should need arise all that much faster. He was faster than Aragorn, but this was quite different.  
  
Aragorn was terrifying when he was fighting and his tension and anger focused on to one single objective, beautiful when he was unaware and sorrowful, quiet and meticulous when normal, but this was just.different!  
  
His skin was freakishly clammy and translucent, and a high color painted pastel strokes under his eyes, his hair darker than dream. His eyes burned. And he was watching Legolas far too closely.far too intensely.  
  
Legolas had seen two creatures in the human's skin; an angel and a demon. The creature before him was neither. Or.possibly both.  
  
"Aragorn?"  
  
Aragorn. Aaaaa-ra-gorn. A simple raspy whisper in a low, dark, soprano. The ideal impossible given flesh. Just his name breathed,-  
  
.gasped? screamed?.  
  
-into the air, the apprehension in the other's reserved, immaculate grey eyes, the power and heat running through his veins.  
  
A droplet---of rain? sweat? fear?-ran down from the other's hairline, down the long and slender bridge of nose, pausing at the rim of the upper lip and sliding slowly to the corner of the mouth. It billowed, swirled, and fell further till it grasped the edge of the chin for dear life, swinging haphazardly over the void of skin, refusing to plunge to it's demise, making a mockery of gravity and inertia. Aragorn deliberately followed the drop to the ground, before raising his eyes up to meet the eyes of the elf.  
  
"Now." Aragorn's voice was soft, somber. He was a melancholy drunk at best, and he wasn't even drunk now. Barely even tipsy.  
  
"What, here?" A slight soprano note entered the elf's voice.  
  
"Yes."  
  
Legolas' version of startlement darted across his face like a phantom seen through the corner of an eye.  
  
"May I?" Aragorn was asking. Not lightly. Asking Legolas. Very seriously. And.there was really only the rain to drink.  
  
Legolas blinked, and thought. Aragorn had a destiny, and now he had a kingdom. He had the token of the Lady Evenstar. He had a life, and a duty, and neither would be lightly thrown away. He did look beautiful in the rain. Stubborn, proud, yet forlorn, and lost. His garb and hair were even darker here and now, making his skin gleam. His eyes shimmered.  
  
--I'll die, you know.and I won't be thinking 'What if I did.'.What if, what if.and you'll hear that all your life. All your life. Yup. Youuu, bugger. And I'll be dead. Poor bastard.-  
  
".yes," he tilted his head down a fraction, eyes flicking to the ground, to Aragorn, then to the ground again.  
  
-- I'm in love with you--  
  
"Yes," he repeated slowly, "you may."  
  
Rough fingers brushed against his skin, tracing the rim of his top lip where the second drop had fallen, crawling down along his jaw and pressing against the contours of his neck. Legolas concentrated on a spot below Aragorn's left shoulder.  
  
Incidentally, the silver chain of a necklace was visible through an opening in Aragorn's tunic.  
  
Fingers brushed along Legolas' forehead, pulled the slicked hair away from his cheek and gently tried to tuck it behind his ear. Fingers combed through the strands, glanced lightly off his back, and cupped his shoulder momentarily.  
  
Aragorn held his hand in front of his chest, and rubbed the thumb over the index and stroked the length of the index.  
  
Legolas watched quietly.  
  
Slowly, perhaps shyly, he brought the hand up to his mouth, and his tongue slid over the index carefully, curiously. His tongue stood out a colored pink against all the sharp contrast of black and white of his garb and body. His eyes slid shut, and he drew in the knuckles of the ring and middle finger, visibly sucking on them. His eyes opened carefully again, and his tongue laved the back of his hand free of excess moisture. He stopped, and again held his hand in front of his chest.  
  
Aragorn looked in him the eyes, deeply, searching his mind and offered Legolas his fingers that he had just been sucking on.  
  
There was cut across his thumb, and an old burn mark over the base of his pinky and ring finger. Legolas blinked sleepily and took in two of the fingers in his mouth, turning his head so he could bite lightly on the sides of Aragorn's knuckles, sucked hard twice and pressed his tongue against the pads of his fingers. He released the fingers, turned the hand up and gradually lapped up the rain water from Aragorn's palm.  
  
He never looked at Aragorn's face. He leaned back slowly.  
  
Legolas closed his eyes and grimaced, mouth pressed into a thin line. All the pain and doubt and fear that he had stored in it's carefully crafted ceramic jar since they left Lothlorien, since Boromir died, since the suspicion of the One Ring.his nightmares of forests burned and spoiled, children calling for parents long dead, the slow decline that was sweeping the elves.all came out.  
  
When he opened his eyes again, they were not the calm and content gray Aragorn had ached and hungered for from a distance.but something far, far older.  
  
And Aragorn felt very small.  
  
"Why do you do this, Ellesar?"  
  
Aragorn felt a pebble of disquiet, and read the other's mood carefully before answering. He wasn't angry, just sad, and hurting very much. He felt a wave of pity and fierce protectiveness wash over him. A creature this beautiful shouldn't have to feel pain.  
  
"You."  
  
Legolas closed his eyes again in pain. He sounded resigned, defeated.  
  
"And what will it take for you to stop?"  
  
Legolas' eyes opened, and ember of anger and defiance afire. "I am tired. I can't pretend anymore," he shook his head, "nor will I continue to do this. So, what will it take to stop it? What will it take to stop you?"  
  
He tilted his chin downward, indirectly yet deliberately putting his face closer to Aragorn's. His voice was soft, and slightly dangerous. Challenging.  
  
"What will you take to sate thyself?"  
  
Aragorn met his gaze squarely.  
  
"Whatever you're willing to give."  
  
Legolas straightened up, his face naturally devoid of expression. But his emotions could still be sensed internally, and Aragorn had always trusted his instincts.  
  
****  
  
Elrond. Watching him eat. Watching him talk. Always seeing more than Aragorn dared show, always knowing more than Aragorn feared. Watching him hunt. Watching him run. Elrond loved him. This Aragorn knew. He could feel it in the hand on his shoulder, the brief smile, the surprise gifts.  
  
Glorfindel had been kinder about it, more playful even. He chose to ignore it, pretend it wasn't there, and when he couldn't do that anymore then he teased about it gently and tried to cover it up again.  
  
The twins accepted it, and would still play with him when they were children. As time went on, it grew a wall between them, and they no longer played.  
  
Arwen had also been accepting, yet curious as well. She had cared for him in spite of it, and perhaps more so, had actually embraced him and it with him.and he had loved her for it. Of them all, he favored her the highest.  
  
The elves were the First Race, with the stars in their eyes and the wind in their hair, children of the night and the stars. They were naturally talented, instinctively wise and quick, and favored by the gods.  
  
They were immortal for as long as they were alive.  
  
They were always beautiful, even in toddling, even in dying.  
  
And Aragorn, for all his merits, was merely human.  
  
Merely mortal.  
  
And they never let him forget it.  
  
Ever.  
  
And now Legolas.  
  
****  
  
Aragorn struck, sending Legolas reeling a back a step before the figure crouched and feinted one fist to the right, while attacking his gut from the left.  
  
Hostilities came easily to both of them now. Call it the tension, the frustration, the fear. Call it the stress. Call it the need to touch, touch anything anyway possible.  
  
Aragorn jabbed Legolas' ribs, grinned when the elf flinched, then had his feet kicked out from under him. His arms were pulled back painfully behind his back, he was shoved against the other's chest to keep standing then a mouth was on his.  
  
It took him a while to realize that.  
  
The lips were pressed roughly against his, were cold and lean. Their teeth clashed. Aragorn struck out with a knee, aiming for groin and hitting a thigh instead.  
  
Legolas still flinched, Aragorn yanked an arm free, grabbed the flaxened hair and yanked down and tilted up.  
  
And kissed him, lips and gentle and warm as he knew, as if he were kissing a virgin. Legolas went rigid.  
  
Aragorn began pressing gently, running his lips in short, soft strokes, while Legolas slowly melted in his arms.  
  
A bit of suction now, nibbling at the corner of his mouth, teasing the rim of his upper lip with his tongue, feel him shiver when you do that. Sweep the tongue across the bottom lip, parting the lips with the just the tip of the tongue, and above all try to encourage him kiss back.  
  
Elves are Romanticists, not Sensualists. That's why they have more love songs and poets than off spring.  
  
Tentatively, Legolas began to respond, combing his hand in the other's hair, finding it surprisingly soft and liquid through his fingers.  
  
And now Aragorn's tongue was in his mouth, his heart forgot to beat, never mind that, his legs were bent at an odd angle to keep his head lower, right now Legolas felt he could get on his knees.and with Aragorn's fingers expertly sliding and gliding and stroking his neck and making him want very, very much elsewhere, Aragorn's other hand already slipped inside his tunic and scalding hot against his rain soaked skin.Legolas wanted to be on his knees.  
  
Aragorn broke for air, leaving Legolas panting with closed eyes. He felt a tongue clean his throat, which made him moan, a kiss on his cheek, then a hot, teasing, and tracing tongue on the rim of his ear. He yelped, almost stood, then dug his fingers bruisingly into the other's skin and sank to his knees.  
  
Aragorn followed.  
  
A hand teased and pulled at his nipples, leaving him whimpering and pleading while another hand investigated his belt and leggings. Aragorn's mouth continued it's magic on his ear that made his hips jerk and nails claw at his back while Legolas swallowed moans and whimpers and the sporadic scream.  
  
There would be bruise marks on Aragorn.  
  
Aragorn would stop his ministrations from taking Legolas on the nerve- wracking string of ecstasy to kiss him, which Legolas was slowly learning.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Author Notes: Sooo~ooo.what did everybody think? Okay? Good? Alright? Um, depending on you, the readers, I'm debating on whether to do a lemon in the next chappie or not. I've never actually done a lemon and posted it before, so I'm not sure how it would do. Um, also, this ficcie is going to be done in the next 1 or 2 chapters, I've got a good idea how, but this is really as far as I've ever actually planned. Just so everybody knows, yes, this will have a conclusion, so cliffie-hangers no worries, kay? Um, also sorry on how long it took getting this chapter out, I actually wrote two different versions for it, and then just combined them because the first was WAY too sappy and the second one didn't have enough lime, so 1+1=6, and there you have it.  
  
Oh, yeah, and thanks to Lux for her advice on writing and working. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, and it's nice that somebody will actually help you through it. 


	11. In the Dark

Due to the recent changes for doubtable good that's been done to ff.net who's taken to censoring their fics, this chapter can be found at the website also known as The Dusty Moth.  Strongly recommend reading.


	12. Close

A/N:…SAP!  And fluff.  Argh.  Some angst later…Sap, I wrote SAP.    Sorry, but pieces of this were written some time ago, last winter to be exact, so there might be some irregularities and jumps in logic.  Blame the ficcy Empathy.  It's driving me mad. :(

****

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth.   
--Mark Twain

****

He teased the full set of lips, using his tongue to paint and tickle the insides and the small ticklish curl under the lower lip, smiling gently when he heard the soft exhalation and finger pads pressed like small marbles below his shoulder blades.  His mouth wandered to the jaw line; Legolas gasped again under him and let his eyes tremble shut with a smile as Aragorn's hands explored not only area, but strength and sharpness as well.  

Humans had always been very inventive, for people who experienced so little.

Roughened fingers gently rubbed the sides of his stomach, tickling him, then scratched around his navel and against the abdomen muscles, making him jerk and gasp.  A thumb rolled and tortured one tender nipple into crimson, making Legolas squirm and his spine writhe, his hips twitching in small jumps.  The long, slender, and attractively solid muscles in his inner thighs were shyly petted before nails bit into them sharply, making them constrict in pain and sweat in pleasure.  Legolas moaned, swallowed the air…and very softly began to beg in Elvish.  

Humans are unusually naïve, yet learn quite quickly.

A raspy sticky warm tongue laved the sweat from the bottom of his chin in long careful strokes, before lowering to suck at the left collar bone, chewing on the skin with his teeth gently, leaving reddened marks that would be yet another bruise on the Elf's ivory skin, come later.  

A jumpy ragged cry of surprise spouted into the air only to fall back on them like the rain, Legolas' eyes wide open and blinking rapidly, his breathing deep and full as his cheeks slowly burned to shell pink.  His mouth opened and moved like a loose door, the look of unbelieving surprise never leaving the bright pearly indigo of his eyes.  Aragorn had been very surprised that Elven eyes could change color according to drastic changes in the owner's mood.  The high color faded out of Legolas' eyes, leaving warm textured blue slate desert sand.  His cheeks darkened, one ear a strong pink and the other a violent red from Aragorn's stray caresses and tongue.  

Humans, also, never seemed to run out of energy, for all their mortality.

Warm darkness folded in around them in sheets.

****

"Legolas."

"…Hm?"

"What _were_ you doing out here?"

"…Before you seduced me?"

"Hm…with my rugged charm and words?  Yes, before that.  Before this…"

Legolas kissed the corner of his lips, a very demonic smirk appearing on his angelic face when he pulled away and Aragorn scowled.

"Damned elf."

The smirk widened, showing his canines.  Legolas spoke softly, grinning, the soft soprano his voice soothing the nerves and fatigue.

"Gimli sent me out looking for you.  He worries for you greatly.  I was concerned as well; but hadn't intention to search for you."

Aragorn lazily glared at him, his eyes tired and sleepy.  Yet the circles beneath them were gone, and his skin seemed smoother, younger almost.  His hair was the color of polished dark mahogany, mussed and tangled like a boy's.

"That wasn't very nice of you."

"You returned the sentiment."

"So it's my fault?"

"Indeed."

A small smirk twitched on Aragorn's own lips.

"…If you had told me before you could do _that_ with your tongue we could've been friends faster."

Legolas' eyes widened innocently, his voice smooth and cordial.

"We were not earlier friends?"

"You threatened to gut me three times, and you were holding a knife for two of them."

"Only because I was upset."

"Hm.  I'd hate to see you when you're furious."

"I am certain you have."

"I think I'd remember."

"I have been.  You simply did not notice…I made certain you did not."

Normally Aragorn would have teased or pursued this line of thought, but a certain sincerity and quiet in Legolas eyes warned him not to.  It may have been jest, but Aragorn doubted it.  

"…Hm.  Planning to kill me in my sleep then?"

"Of course not.  That is your expertise."

"Does this mean I can only touch you when you're awake?"

"Truth?"

"Hm."  Aragorn nodded.

"…You may touch me whenever you desire."

Very, very few people Aragorn knew would be capable of saying that line, those exact words, with a straight face.  Even fewer people, perhaps no one at all, would be able to say those words with a level tone of voice—without a growl, a purr, a smile, an invitation…without anything except the naked truth and sincerity.  

Aragorn swallowed.  

Shiny gray navy eyes blinked at him, nothing but quiet peace and sincerity in them.  Legolas…meant it.  He truly meant it.  Everything.  

Elves were not known for doing things halfway.

"…_Really_.  Well…my thanks…"  Aragorn looked down a second, and traced his fingers over the planes of Legolas' chest while he thought.  Then he smiled and looked into his eyes again.  "And the same honor is returned to you, Legolas."   Aragorn nudged his nose against Legolas' forehead and kissed the corner of his eye.  

Aragorn smirked darkly, pale teeth flashing, a silken timbre entering his deep voice lasciviously.  His hand trailed over a pale hip, and cupped the flesh beneath it.  Legolas nearly grinned back.

"Of course, you realize…you'll regret that."

****

The rain poured on heavily, so heavily that it was impossible to find where the rain ended and the mist began.  Small trickles of water poured off the roofs in vertical streams, landing on the streets to become small creeks and smaller rivers, before disappearing to holes in stone topped with metal strainers.  As a major city, even in its decline, Gondor boasted one the few city-wide aqueduct systems, to keep the rains from flooding the city streets as was wont to happen to other lesser cities.  

Aragorn and Legolas walked through the rain in companionable silence, indifferent to the wet.  They did not hold hands or touch, but sometimes Aragorn would glance to side to see a faraway look in Legolas eyes, and a small smile on his lips.  Aragorn was fighting the impulse to smirk, and to touch Legolas on the shoulder.

"What will you do when you return home?" Aragorn broke the quiet gently.

"_When_ I return home?"

"Indeed.  Or are you planning to take up a permanent residence in Gondor?  I'm sure we can find a place, after the war.  I'm sure they'll welcome warriors, if only to have them for hunters in the woods."

"I am certain the people would welcome their king, should they find him."

"…I'm not so sure of that…So are you really thinking of staying?"

"I have a choice?"

  
"Of course.  You always have a choice."

"…Hmm.  I would like to stay…if everything goes to plan.  It is pleasant here.  But I mean to see my father as soon as possible.  His health was…rough, when I left."

Aragorn nodded, and fought down the impulse to touch Legolas again.

"What of you?  Where shall you go, if you choose not here?" Legolas queried, his eyes turning to Aragorn.

"…don't know.  I could go back to wandering, back to the road.  I was comfortable there.  I'd—I'd _like_ to stay here.  Help where needed.  If they'd have me."

"They would.  They call for their king."

"Not for Strider."

"One and the same, if you hear them out."

"…Maybe I'll go with you.  Back to your home," Aragorn purred, grinning at the subsequent shiver and blush, eyes glinting when Legolas looked away.  "In the woods.  Keep you company…in case you get bored."

Legolas guwaffed in an unrefined way, his voice stronger.

"An impossibility, with you there.  Getting drunk every other night," Aragorn chuckled, "picking fights with any and all," a snicker and illicit caress down Legolas' arm, "moping around all day and keeping people up at all ill hours of the night—By the gods you act as youth, are you _never_ sated?"

Legolas pushed Aragorn's hand down from his neck and ear, a faint color already starting in the angles of his cheeks.  Aragorn grinned.  Sometimes, it was better just to give in to temptation.  He was learning that the results were not as damning as he had always believed.

"Ah, feeling your age, old man?  Fear not, I can change that…"

Legolas looked at him sharply, while Aragorn simply smiled at him innocently and held his hands up.  Except that Aragorn very rarely looked innocent.  He hardly ever did.  Yet he did look…

"Aragorn."

"Hm?"

"…Your hair."

"What about it?"

"It's…darker.  And your face is…lighter."

"…It's probably the cold."

"No.  It looks…younger.  _You_…look younger…Strange."

****

"Chose a _rite_ bonny time ta make up yer differences, ye did!  Anyone _else_ wouldda picked a nice spot by a waterfall, maybe a diamond mine with smooth stone on yer back…gems overhead."

Legolas smiled absently and nodded his consent while ineffectually retying the same knot on his pack for the fifth time.  Gimli watched quietly.  

"And you two pick _Mordor's_ doorstep, outta all the spots in Middle Earth."

Legolas bobbed his head a second time, before momentarily frowning and setting about retying his knot.  

"What a complete toff."

Gimli waited for a reaction, astounded when all he received was the faint, continuous smile and gentle nod, the faraway smirk never fully leaving Legolas' eyes or the corners of his mouth.  They _had_ been gone for five hours, rushing into camp _together_, not even bothering to come separately, at the beginning of breakfast.  Legolas had been a little flushed and not quite as distantly alert and courteous as he usually was, constantly smiling, and Aragorn had looked…different.  Very different.  Nearly… _cheerful_, and much healthier and younger.  Even an Elf, Gimli thought, could figure out what had happened.

  
"Aragorn 'ad _better_ not be the same, so 'elp me god!"

"Hm?"

Legolas' head snapped up, eyes alert with a slight brighter sheen, and a darker smirk widening to show a quick glint of white before melting back into a harmless, gentle, faint smile.  Gimli scowled.

"Elves are such idiots.  Ye prick!  What a bunch of posturing toffs, 'ave ye even been _listening_ to a single damned thing I've said?  You 'aven't 'ave ye?  I pray Aragorn is not the same, I can take _one_ daft elf but at a time; two is madness!"

Legolas smiled and his eyes glimmered as he went back to his knot.

"Oh.  That again.  Fear not, Aragorn is not Elf, of that I can guarantee completely.  In total confidence."

"Humph.  I can imagine."

Legolas gave another perennial grin and nod, seeming to conquer his knot terminally.  His mind seemed to finally register Gimli's comment on setting for Aragorn's and his…new understanding.

"I grant you agreement in the place and time; there may have room for improvement.  Certain-"

Legolas frowned and tilted his head to look at a spot on the floor, where Gimli could not see his eyes.

"Certain arrangements should…have been changed, certain agreements—broken."  He appeared to rethink, and his voice came out still strong, yet uneven.  "Clarified."

He swallowed.  Gimli narrowed his eyes.  Trust an Elf to tie the truth around with twisty words.  Legolas appeared to be fighting himself and conquer, although grudgingly.  

"But—to wait would have been worse.  The one day everything is perfect…may well be the day everything dies."

Legolas looked up, and Gimli felt his stomach crunch.  Legolas smiled.  

"The day is nigh upon us, my friend.  We should go out to meet it, you agree?"

Gimli blinked suspiciously, not trusting the faint smile or gentle, amiable smile.  

Elves wore the brightest colors, but they had lived and thrived in the darkest times.  They had the skills of the demons and monsters themselves, but weren't condemned for them because they knew how to share and wash their hands and faces before company.  Elves knew the benefits of kindness and friendship.  But the skills remained.  What couldn't be killed, what couldn't be forgotten, was shut quietly away—but that didn't mean it couldn't come out again.  How long had Legolas been alive?  How much had he seen?

"Will ye be right?" Gimli asked quietly, the belligerence and indignance gone from his voice, a somber concern echoing in his tone.

Legolas nodded his head.

"I am not made of glass.  I have survived life thus far, I will walk further yet."

"Aye.  But ye'll have me there.  Dinna ye ferget that, di'ye ken me?"

Legolas looked up as Gimli swatted his hands away, picked the knot open, then in a twist, tug, and flip of the wrist tied a knot as swiftly as Legolas ever had, although in a different style he didn't recognize and much securer and stronger.

"Hmph.  And maybe one day ye'll learn ta tie a decent knot.  Walkin' in the damn woods'll rot your mind certain as not, wouldena recommend it a'tall."

"Hm."  

Legolas fingered the knot.

"Thank you.  But now I have a destination.  It will not be long now."

****

And then the war was over.  Not in day, not in year, and would not be over before Aragorn's lifetime was over and would not end when Middle Earth was on its deathbed…but the war was over in a second.  And it was done.  

The Ringbearer was returned to them breathing, the hero of the Age alive after the battle.  Only he wasn't.  He was burned and scarred, broken and shattered in so many pieces that Aragorn had been stunned, and hadn't even tried to heal him, had no idea where to start or what to do.  Gandalf had tried, and had accomplished much, much less than he had tried.  The Ringbearer was returned alive.  Yet the Ringbearer stayed there dead.

It was no secret among those close that Aragorn blamed himself heavily.

Gingerly, slowly, people picked themselves off and up from the wreckage, and looked around, and wondered if they were alive, before stumbling back to the ground.  

Together, the leaders of the realm, Faramir the Captain of the Guard, Imharail the Prince of Dol Amroth, Gandalf the White of the Istari and Aragorn, King of Gondor, put it all back together, and healed as best as possible.  And the war was not yet over.

By bits and pieces, through talks and time and healing…the people and land were put together.  And then made whole.

And then the Elves came: the Elven lords Elrond and Galadriel and Celeborn, to acknowledge and bless the new kingdom and honor the old alliances that once bound them together.  The Elves came also, to say goodbye.

****

A/N: Oooo…the angst comes next.  The angst, and the final chapter.  The story, could, quite possibly, if you the reader should desire.  I'm logging in the next chapter as an epilogue, so it isn't necessary—it isn't _vital_ that it's read—because it really is kind of sad.  I like this ending myself actually, even it is missing the constant tension and anguish that pretty much strings through all the chapters, I did this one when I was more relaxed and said, "Ah, the hell.  It'll all be cool eventually right?"  It's fluffy and soft and sweet, but…everything has to end sometime right?  

And everything ends with death.  Because no one's ever written their autobiography postmortem…yet.

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who helped me through this fic, especially when I wasn't sure what to do or how to do it, and pushed me on when I felt like falling because going on was too hard.  

Shout out goes to Blanton Cirith, who wears blue socks, Kyrri who is sometimes Irish for her pleasure, Lux/Lucia for vital, _vital_ help in the beginning middle section and hopefully isn't growing up (don't grow up!), Jessie, the Ice Cream Assassin, Alura who wants me to quit a job I don't have :)…, and especially Kharessa Bloodrose who proved that interesting people sometimes live with cows and are married and writes essays for fun and useful feedback.

I'd also like to thank many reviewers, who really gave birth to the story.  Originally, this fic was meant to be an one-shot, starting and ending with the first chapter where Aragorn narrates.  It bloomed into something totally unexpected, something that would have totally daunted me and stopped me if I had known it would have come this far in the beginning.  But there you have it.  This is the end.  

-Thank You!  And GOODNIGHT!


	13. Epilogue

A/N: As always, read with discretion.  Er…I'm also thinking of re-posting this chapter.  I don't quite like the way it turned out, but I'm not sure _how_ I want it to turn out either.  Strange.  Erck. _

gelfling8604@yahoo.com

*

They're not, you know, easy to live with - the Elves. They're tricky. They've seen everything. They've been around thousands of years. You have to go the extra mile every day to keep them happy. 

--Viggo Mortensen

Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.   
--Mark Twain

She's realized the real problems with stories—If you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.

--Bette, Sandman Comics, Neil Gaiman

Pride is a fickle thing.

-gelfling

Death: The High Cost of Living

--Title comic, Neil Gaiman

****

_~Legolas_~

She is coming soon.  I knew she would.  And also, I know what he is going to do.  

I want to blame him.  A part of me does already.  

A part of me, the dark, _old_ part, hates him bitterly for what he is done.  I want to act the way he thinks I will.  He is prepared for it; perhaps subconsciously, yet he has prepared nonetheless.  His hand hovers constantly over his sword hilt, his eyes watch mine closer.  

He is not afraid.  Dreading, perhaps, guilty, and waiting.  But not afraid.  Perhaps he should be, he has never yet felt my anger for himself.  It may be he still considers himself my equal.  

It could not be more false, but it would not be unnatural for his race.  He is, after all, only human.  I will not attack.  I…had conceived this betrayal from the first moment of his fascination, his obsession, though I saw no reason to seriously consider it.  It is…not the _betrayal_ that has hurt me.  I am old.  It would not be the first.  

What burns is…the disillusionment.  The denial.  The lost hope that perhaps he would stay—

Esselar.  What irony, is it not?  I am sick of it.  Truly, he does have the gift of hope, and gives it freely wherever he goes.  

…I should have known better than to accept.  My kind has had enough experience with ill gifts.  I find that obscurely shameful.  Indeed, he gave me his hope and life, as he gave Gondor and Rohan.  But unlike them, there was no way he ever could have cleanly kept his obligation to me.  Ever.  

His people may accept an Elvish bride with but shallow misgivings.  They would not accept an Elvish youth.  Even were I human.  They would not accept an heir-less king.  

It does not matter anymore.  I cannot change it now.  I would not.  I will not.  He will come to me again tonight, or I will go to him.  It makes little difference.  We may hide and avoid each other until daybreak, but we will have met before the day has begun.  We need each other.

We never mention problems.  We never speak of the future.  He will say he wants me, and I will gasp and moan his name…he will cry a little quietly, casually, afterwards, like always…and life will continue.  

She is coming soon.  And I will _not_ be a closet toy to be taken out and put away when I cannot be seen.  I am a prince and warrior of my kind.  I am my own.  I have my pride.  I will take nothing less than acknowledgement, and I cannot ask him to choose between his kingdom and I.

…I blame myself.  

I never should have loved him.  

I never should have fallen.

****

_~Aragorn_~

I know I'll never be everything they need.  

They have so much, they _are_ so much.  

Any need they might have would be nothing less than a miracle, an act of the gods.  But what miracles I can do I'd gladly give to them.  

They could never be mine, not fully, neither of them, not little sister nor him though I wish he could be.  I long for him and I know now that he does the same.  I know he can't be mine.  I want him to live; I _need_ him to live sometimes more than I want myself too.  I can't ask him to stay with me.  I won't ask him to stay with me.  

I want him to stay with me.  But I will _not_ see him age.  I don't want to see him fade.  Not with time, but with boredom.  With fatigue.  Never has an Elvish youth betrayed his blood and immortality for love, and I would not ask it of him.  I can't conceive of it, I don't want to think about it.  

If I could freeze time I'd do so in an instant, these minutes living on peril and fear and grief just so I could see him this way and be myself, myself the way I want to be, still strong and able.  

I don't want to age.  I don't want to die that way; I'd rather die on the field at the hand of some orc or monster than die in traction in some bed.  I don't want to age.  Selfish indeed I am, and human truly is my blood.  

But I won't put him through that.  I wouldn't put her through that either, but what I will or no with her is but a passing consideration.  She does what she wishes, and I love her all the more for it, my little sister who was so much more older than me.  

I'll remember him this way.  I'll remember him this way forever.

Anything else is beyond my reach, and I'm desperate and weak enough to go on loving and dreaming of a memory.  

Sometimes lovers kill each other; kill themselves, to keep each other near.  I've seen the mother's of slaves, prisoners themselves, drowned their own children to keep them from being sold away, to protect them from the dangers of the world.  

It chills me, but I understand the mercy in it.  The selfishness in it, sometimes.  Time comes and destroys and changes the old and gives life to the new.  Time is cruel.  Time is patient.  

I love him too much to kill him.  

I could not kill him to save him.

I will not keep him if that is the price he pays.

I'll take what I can, and pray to the Valar that he understands.

I doubt he will.  I scarce understand it myself.

****

Legolas surveyed the bright festivities quietly from the side, drinking the alcohol that was offered to him and smiling and conversing with those who approached him, those from inside the city-state who recognized him as the Elf who had brought the woods and green life to the city during the reconstruction, and those from foreign sovereignties who recognized him as royalty and a warrior.  

Through it all, Legolas turned his head to whisper in another Elf's ear, "We'll depart before morn.  Make the preparations."

Then the Prince of Mirkwood continued to survey the converging and merging crowds quietly, before finishing his drink and leaving where it could be later found and collected.  Then he left.

****

Aragorn caught him the corridor.  Legolas' finery was already stripped and gone, wearing tough riding clothes against the chill and rain that would accompany a long journey.

"Legolas."

Legolas turned towards Aragorn, paused politely and gave a small bow at the neck, lowering his eyes to the ground before raising them to Aragorn's again.  

"Milord.  Congratulations on your marriage.  I wish you and your lady the best of luck."  

Aragorn cut him off quickly, quietly, if there was more he would have said.

"You're leaving," he said curtly, nearly accusingly.  Legolas nodded to the side, keeping his head and eyes lowered while still watching Aragorn, and smiled faintly.  His voice was as clear and calm as ever.

"Yes.  Word came from Mirkwood this afternoon, and I am unable to tarry further due to certain complications."

"Lego-"

"Accept my condolences, milord, and my thanks for your hospitality.  As much as I desire, I must take my leave-"

"Damn it elf you will _not_ shut me out again!"
    
    Legolas blinked in apparent surprise at the sudden outburst, and tilted his head to the side, radiating innocence and naiveté.  A lucid man familiar with Elves would have ducked and started running.*

"…I meant no-"

"Shut up!  Just shut up, right now.  Save your neat little words for another time, I'm not interested now."

Aragorn turned his head and ran his fingers through his hair distractedly.  The Elf watched all this, watched the emotions play brazenly on his face, before carefully choosing his course of action.  Legolas' eyebrows lifted in mock surprise, and his eyes glinted feral.

"…True?  And prithee, Lord of Gondor, what would interest you, on the night of your nuptials?"

Legolas had a good voice, clear and clean when he wanted it, yet could easily turn it into something dark and sweet and temptingly dangerous.  His voice whispered the words like a cordial invitation into Hell itself.  He was, quite, quite faintly, smiling.

"…Legolas-"

"Your good lady waits for you now, does she not?  As she has waited for _so_ long…It, indeed, would be a crime against her to keep her waiting further."

Legolas smiled gently, faintly at Aragorn, demanding his gaze, his voice leaving aftershocks of promise and pleasure in the gray dry air.  Aragorn kept it.  And then he broke down, only slightly.  

"…I-I'm sorry.  I'm in a difficult situation, and it's not one I can slash or stab my way out of."

Legolas eyes slitted fractionally, and his voice dropped in tone and strengthened.  The cold regality came back easily to him, and was familiar and welcome.

"I do not expect you to…milord.  You have my blessing.  What more do you want?"

Aragorn glanced at him briefly before returning to his shirtsleeve.

"…Her life was compromised before she came here.  There was nothing left to do.  I didn't know she was going to do it; I would have stopped her if I had known.  I didn't know.  I couldn't leave her, not after what she did, what she sacrificed!…She wouldn't have anything then.  I couldn't leave her."

Legolas nodded.  He already knew.  Aragorn had already apologized.  

"I would not expect you to."

"…But you hoped I would."

There was a still.

"…Goodnight, milord."

"Legolas," Aragorn's voice was quiet, pleading.  A vein of strong dignity ran through it, nicely complemented by the soft humility that cradled it.  Aragorn took a step towards Legolas' back.

"There is nothing left to be said."  Legolas didn't bother to turn around to face him; he would not look at him.  He would not look at him and simply continue to walk, and matters would care for themselves.

"There's plenty more to say…I'm sorry.  I didn't think-"

"No," Legolas fought down a small smile.  He could hear the confusion plainly in Aragorn's voice.  Humans were so adorably predictable at times, Aragorn sometimes chief among them.  "You need not take guilt-"

"I'll do what I like, elf."  Humans were also predictably stubborn.  Legolas fought down the urge to snort.

"Thou'rt being childish.  I am not accusing you of anything."

"I'll do what I think is right.  She chose me freely, my own choice was thus decided, regardless of what my heart-"

"No.  You continue to misunderstand.  Whatever happened--between comrades in battle stays as thus.  In battle, and no further."

"What?"

"Your lady waits for you.  My father requires me.  The war is over, milord," Legolas smiled faintly, turning slightly.  "The war is over.  And what was done…to survive it-"

"Legolas-"

"Is also over."  For a second, Aragorn saw Elrond, or perhaps Celeborn reflected in the torchlight.  Legolas' voice was never so hard, so cold and solid like granite as it was now.  It would tolerate no argument, and would turn to teeth and steel on the spot.  Aragorn's muscles relaxed in preparation, and Legolas must have understood his expression, for his tone softened and lowered instantly.  "Done.  That which does not agree with our current style of life—must be over."

"…You really mean that."

Legolas could hear the disbelief…the shock.  And, underneath it, the pain that had been festering for some months now.  It all came through very clearly, in Aragorn's voice.  Aragorn was hurt; afraid, and very soon he was going to get angry.  Or perhaps not, it was too hard to tell with Aragorn, at times.  He wanted to run.  He wanted to run very badly.  He didn't run.

"Your lady waits for you, milord."

Aragorn blinked once, slowly.

"I'm aware of that….And stop calling me 'lord' elf.  You know who I am."

"…Do you?"

"…Quiet."

There was no fire in that remark, no sting.  No, Aragorn was not going to get angry.  Aragorn was going to get depressed, and perhaps later drunk.  Legolas sighed, curled his fingers, and wondered why he cared.

"…You required comfort, as did I.  While it was permissible at the time, it cannot be so now.  It _is_ not so now."

"Perhaps…but you don't believe that."

"It is true milord-"

"I _know_ it's true.  But you don't believe it--and neither do I!  And don'tcall _me_ 'lord'."  

In truth, Aragorn had never, in his known existence, felt royal.  Had never felt noble.  He knew how to lead, how to care, and how to tell what people wanted and what people needed without them saying it.  

In truth, Aragorn knew everything one really needed to guide people well, and history would prove as much.  But he did not _feel_ superiority that was bestowed with the crown, and being addressed with such deference by Legolas, the  clerk, the nobleman, his ethereal lover…felt wrong.

"…I'll take my leave now, milord."

"Dammit Legolas-" Aragorn snarled, and reached out without thinking.

"Don't _touch_ me."

Remarkable, how quickly violence came to both of them once words were no longer interesting.  Legolas' eyes were dark and narrow, canines flashing in the dull torchlight, and Aragorn had instantly flowed into a stance, hand already on his sword.  His hand was throbbing, bruised and a little damp, and quite possibly broken.  Legolas had always been incredibly strong, as archers had to be.  Swordsmen could be a bit slight if they were fast and knew how to strike well, but archers had to be strong to pull back on the bow, the aged wood and string, hard enough to puncture skin and armor.  

"I'm not done with you," Aragorn's voice stalked on the floor.  He stood his ground, and was deceptively still.

"But _I_ am done with us!  All that there has been to say has _been_ said and now should be _forgotten_.  You can't hold on to two, Aragorn, nor would I consent!"

Legolas' voice was sharper and harsher than usual, losing some of the Elfin fluidity and chilliness that made it so irresistible.  He was also using contractions in his speech, a sure sign that his nerves were frayed.  It took sometime for understanding to dawn on Aragorn.  

"…You thought that—Have you _no_ understanding whatsoever-"

Legolas cut him off coolly, frigidly, sharply furious without splendor.  "I understand that there have been made…too many conflicting agreements, milord."

Aragorn said nothing.  Aragorn thought nothing.  He had…predicted, that the climax would be painful.  Regrets.  Sorrow.  Grief.  He had not expected violence.  He had not expected so much _anger_.

_So this is what it's boiled down to, is it?  Agreements._   

Legolas had rarely looked so alien and distant, had never looked so inhumanely mechanical and lifeless as he did standing only a some feet away in his familiar Elvish traveling garb, the torchlight whispering and caressing the warm cheeks and dyed wool of his tunic.

"…So that's it.  You're just going to walk out and forget anything ever happened."  

Aragorn studied him for any reaction, any rebuttal or glimmer of rebellion.  He kept his own voice dispassionate, distant.  A king had pride.  It was a requirement.  And he was king now.  By blood, by heart, and by mind.  As Isildur's heir.  And, contrary to belief and in accord with their very definition, kings did –_not-_ ask.

"It's all history to you."  Silence.  "Just dead facts, is that it?"

Legolas' gaze was still, constant.  Immortal.  

"I am an elf, milord, as thou 'art fond of reminding me," he said quietly.  "_All_ things are history to me."

***

You return to where you belong, to where you are needed.  You return, always, to where your heart calls you, even if it calls out to nothing.  Even if you don't know where to go.  It still calls, and you will always return, though few recognize this, as the location changes.

And few know their own hearts.

Home is where the heart is.

***

"And the children?"

"Well, and thriving, milord."

"Ah."  Aragorn's attention now wholly followed his gaze that watched the setting sun from his open window.  It was nearing winter, and the leeches warned heavily against the cold and illness that the air bore, especially at His Lordship's age.  Aragorn nodded solemnly to their warnings, and heeded them dutifully when the Lady Evenstar was near.  

When she was near.

When she was not, he commanded them furiously into the streets, nearly threw them out himself with his glare and voice alone, and into the many sick and healing houses that seemed to grow in numbers daily.  The people needed them more than he did, and he grudgingly endured their ministrations only for Arwen's piece of mind.  

Already, he had lived far longer than many of the people of Gondor, save the Lady herself.  There was so much one could argue and contest, before Death's seduction was complete.  Of course, Arwen would not readily accept or understand that.  

It made him smile, how his little sister was so wise, and yet still so naïve about the ways of Men.

Soon…it would be soon.  

And she knew it, didn't she?  She knew, for all his show and bravado and smiles and dry sarcastic humor and jokes.  She knew.  Elladan and Elhorir had come the past few months once for a visit, and they had talked nearly as they had been as when they were children.  Nearly.  Before her eyes.  But behind them…

The twins were Elvish.  They wore this fact like armor, like medical gloves, lest they dirty their hands with something _not_ Elvish.  

So Aragorn had suggested a brisk horse ride through his country.  Both twins had accepted.  Arwen, and anyone else, were discreetly excluded.

Aragorn later claimed that he taken the turn too fast for his horse, and so explained his shoulder.  Elladan darkly joked that the ground had risen up as a cat, the bewitched and magical ground, and had startled his mare into rearing, and his sister should count herself lucky that her brother escaped with only a black eye, and not eaten by whatever creature slumbered beneath the soil.  Elhorir had merely shrugged, and said an accident had happened to him earlier, and it was only now that the bruises were showing on his ribs.  The minor scratches all three sported on their faces were merely caused by the thick brush that they had driven so recklessly through.  

Arwen said nothing.

Elladan spoke with Aragorn much later, when they were alone in one of the libraries that the castle maintained.  The air smelled of dust and leather and polish, and light was dim in regards to huge amount of paper kindling that permeated the space.  

They sat in chairs opposite of each other, words a little rougher and saltier than Elves were wont to use coming out of Elrond's blood child, and a smile wafting in and out of existence on his lips.  Skeptical, Aragorn listened carelessly to Elladan's dry accounts of his travels in the far world and supposed fatal battles and discreet, romantic love affairs and…

…Aragorn was never quite certain how Elladan had ended up in his lap, arms painfully tight around his shoulders, and sobbing brokenly, angrily against his neck.  

He was less certain how to react.  Gingerly, hesitantly, he put his hands flat on Elladan's back and waited.  Words came to him, to his ears, in broken incoherent Elvish and Common.  Words of disdain.  Words of damnation.  Words of regret and sadness and desperate denial.  Little of it made sense.  Finally, came the confession: 

"I loved you, brother," came the words silently, wetly into his ear.  "I love you still.  I'm sorry.  I'm sorry, I didn't—

"And I love you in return—brother.  Not always," Elladan had laughed weakly, brokenly, and Aragorn smiled.  "And not often, for you are the _damndest_ creature to ever were silk and Elrond's insignia, brother…but my love you have."  The grip on his neck and shoulders tightened.  "And the fault is not yours.  Not yours.  Remember that, my brother."

Against his neck the elf inhaled deeply, grimaced, and rubbed his eyes against the cloth and skin.  A deep flush was already working its way up his neck, to his cheeks, to mark his rare moment of weakness.  His ribcage moved in waves, and he relaxed his death grip on Aragorn's flesh.  But he stayed there, in his embrace, for most of the night.  Later, he seemed to ignore that the encounter absolutely, save he was a little easier to speak with and smile.

Elhorir kept his distance, and his silence, courteous always among his host and hostess, but no more.  He chose his encounter in the stables.  Despite his status and wealth, Aragorn would allow few others to care for the horse of his personal choosing.  He had been unharnessing him when cool dark eyes caught his, held him still, and an equally cold pale fingers took his hand from the bridle.

Turned over, gently handled, pressing down on the skin and muscle to feel the bones and learn where the borders of pain lied…Wondering over the texture and feel, the vague powderieness that seemed to coat the skin and would not wipe off…how the skin could be pulled away from the flesh without breaking, recoiling in morbid fascination at the sight of the blue veins so visible at the wrist, nearly coming out of the skin…

Wondering how the tanned smooth hands that he had helped fashion childish arrows and stone daggers had metamorphed into the things he saw before him now.  When they had had the strength to pull him from his horse and push him from his perch in the tree and give him a bruised wrist and black eye.  How had they managed to bruise his ribs so badly that morning two days ago, in this state?

Where had Aragorn gone?  What happened?  

Elhorir probed harder, deeper.

What had happened?  

Blue eyes, light sterling azurine eyes still flecked with silver that still shown with a light of their own were waiting, when he raised his gaze to Aragorn's.  The Elf's eyes were dark, fathomless, and faintly hostile.  Aragorn waited, patiently.  

"You have made my brother cry, mortal."  

Aragorn did not ask how he knew.  He doubted Elladan would mention it, or even admit to it, in the severest of interrogations to even Elrond had he been there, much less to his twin rival and partner Elhorir.  He didn't bother denying it.

"You will not do the same to me."

_Ah, so that's where this was leading, was it?_  As if Aragorn wanted company in sorrow, in regret for his age and aging.  It was a fact of human life.  He had accepted it long ago.  A dark smile played on his lips, and his eyes narrowed.

"I have no desire to."

Elhorir studied him longer, piercingly, perceiving far more that what Aragorn's eyes showed, trying to look beyond into his heart and soul itself.  It was a disconcerting, familiar sensation.  This is where Elrond's strength and perceptibility had gone, to this one and not the others.  Elhorir nodded once, curtly.

"No," he said softly.  He nodded again, more easily.  He held Aragorn's hand easily in his own and squeezed.  Aragorn gripped in return.  

"You did well."

***

"…Ye goddamned 'umans.  And the damned elves o' course, ye canna do none right wit' _them_ about ye…but still I canna na see ye.  I don't understand ye, and I've known ye longer than any o' the damn fairies and wenches ye've littered the place wit'.  They've no right ta be 'ere…_they don't **do** anything!_"  
  


Aragorn grinned weakly.  He had said as much for the majority of his lifetime, but it felt indescribably _good_ to have someone else say it as well.  

"Heh, so _now_ ye smile laddie, eh?  Ah, reg'lar, that's wot ye be, a dinty hard bitten larriken an' gods 'elp me iffen I know 'ow the 'ell _you_ became king."  There was a pause.  "Ye did well at it laddie, ye did reel well…an' nobody else couldenna done better by it.  They wouldenna gottana fair _keeled_ ta do 'alf the things ye did there, friend.  Ye did well."

Yes, they all said he did well.  Quite often.  Aragorn wondered absently if they were trying to convince _him_, or perhaps themselves.

"Still as much as a cold bastard as ye ever were, but that's only ta be 'alf expected then, innit?  Nobody thought ye'd do it, some bumpkin outta the damn woods, but ye did, didn'tcha, aye?  Better'n any o' those fairies could've…near better than any man 'ad right to do."  

There was another pause, and Aragorn felt himself under close inspection.  

"An' ye know to wot I say, Aragorn."

_No.  Not really.  I only did what I thought was right.  And…I hated it._  _I hated myself for it.  I hated doing it.  Strange, but I never hated Gondor for it.  Nothing and no one escaped my scorn or anger, save Gondor herself.  The very cause of it all._

"Ye know 'e is 'ere."

Quiet.  Still.  Check.

"An' 'e's been waitin', fer sometime now, aye.  Talkin' wit' the Lady now…but 'e'll come soon nuff ta see ye."

A cold, rough hand with burning blood beneath the skin and strength impossible gripped his arm gently.

"Be kind, Aragorn, be kind."

Checkmate.

***

There are moments so grotesque, so indescribably _unfair_, that they shouldn't have to happen.  They have no right to happen.  They have no _right_.

It's only a part of the irony, that they are so common, these moments.  That they have made themselves necessary.  That they have been woven into the very fabric of life.

This does not give them right.  They have no _right_!

It was not dramatic, unromantic, and completely practical and platonic.  It shouldn't have been, though.  But anything else would have been entirely too painful.  

In the end, there truly was only memories, only sensations recorded in electric packages to keep the darkness away in one's head, because no light came through the eyes anymore because they were never open.  There was the faint communication of touch, his hearing was still active, and he was still alive.  Still alive, but barely.

It was fearful, frightening, on how fragile he was.  First impulse, first overwhelming driving overriding impulse was to get him indoors, somewhere shielded and protected where nothing would brush him, because he would fall apart if something did.  But he was already indoors.  And there was nowhere safer.  

His eyes trailed everywhere in horrified fascination.

_My God, what happened?  Why?  Why; he did nothing wrong?  Why?  _

He didn't deserve this.  Not like this.  Not this.  

Legolas had seen worse, he had seen too many.  He had seen far too many, too often, and all the more common now.  Time stopped for…this was wrong.  This was wrong.  They shouldn't have to change like this.  They shouldn't have to change like _this_.  

Not like this.  On the field.  In the darkness.  Not here, not like this, not where everyone could see the weakness and strength like they had the _right_, like they were somehow _better_…like it was all somehow all acceptable.  This wasn't acceptable.  This wasn't all right.

He closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.  He struggled.

When he opened his eyes again, light blue eyes were regarding him coolly, almost dispassionately, watching him while tears ran in neat, thin streams down his cheeks, perfectly symmetrical of each other.

This shouldn't have happened.  This shouldn't have happened.

_We_, shouldn't have happened.

But…Aragorn had known, hadn't he?  He had known.  He hadn't let us…He hadn't let us happen.  Beyond the initial, beyond the preliminary and the passion and lust and affection…he didn't let me love him.  Not…He let _her_.  But she didn't…not madly, not passionately, desperate, not like me.  Not like…

He knew.  He knew all the time.

What right did _he_ have, to decide this?  What right did he have to keep it secret? 

"My gift," he whispered softly, so softly he almost didn't catch it.

"This…is my life.  My gift."

Legolas wasn't sure what he did, how or where he moved, he was barely in control.  He was too stunned to do much of anything, and turned his head down while his eyes unfocused and flashed and constricted and widened all out of control.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this.  Not here.  Not like this.

His hand was gripped tightly.  

"My gift.  My life."

Legolas shook his head gently, demurely, disagreeing politely as he did nearly everything politely.  

No.  No not like this.  It can't happen like this.  It happens later, much later, or it ended differently somewhere else, or it didn't happen at all, but it didn't happen like this.  Not slow.  Not ugly.  Not a losing battle against a passive faceless enemy.  Not like this.  This was no war, this was no warrior.  This was…cattle.  Not like this.  

_Elves_ didn't do it like this!  They didn't…he was nearly Elvish, there was some in the blood, it shouldn't have to be like this.  It shouldn't.

Where was the _passion_, the life, where was the fire?  He'd felt it, he'd been burned over and over by it and he had rejoiced in the marvelous unbearable intensity that wracked through and over his skin and nerves, the feeling of simply being together, of simply touching and kissing and knowing that this was forbidden and it was perfect and that they were absolute opposites and everything about them being together, being in love, was absolutely impossible.  It was doing the impossible, being the forbidden, what they had done, a human and elf, man and man, civilized and primal and they had done it.  They had done the impossible.  

For a few days, yes, but the fire never really never went out.  The fire could never really go out.  It was eternal.  It was immortal.  It shouldn't…it shouldn't have been based…it shouldn't…no…

"This is not a gift."

That was all he had said.  That was all he could say.  Even as he spoke the words, he knew they were too harsh, out of place and time, that they didn't belong and he regretted them before they even began on his lips.  But he meant them.  He meant them and hated them and they were the only things he knew as true.  

Aragorn had simply smiled, and squeezed his hand, his flesh cool even to Legolas.

There were things that Elves were denied, things that despite their knowledge, their beauty, their perfection, they were not fit to have.  They were not fit to understand.  They grew older, but changed little.  They were frozen in time, and only became more and deeper of what they truly were.  

They had no fire to them, inside of them.  They couldn't take it.  They could only reflect the vitality, the fire in other's, be it man or beast, could only mimic and watch and wonder and reflect like mirrors of beauty and perfection.  But they couldn't take it.  That was denied to them.  

Because while ice and water could last forever, fire always, eventually, went out.  That was its charm.  That was it's power, it's element, that everything bright and hot left so the darkness was never forgotten, that the cold was just around the corner, so nothing was taken for granted.  Nothing could ever, should ever be taken for granted.  It had to be cherished.  

"Elf…live."

Legolas closed his eyes, breathed in, and leaned over to kiss him gently on his brow.

"I love you."

Aragorn said, smiling faintly.

"My thanks, Strider."

Legolas sat back, quietly, and continued to hold his hand.

***

…and the story's over.  Done.  And my gratitude to my reviewers who've stuck with me through thick and thin, I never expected or even believed I could write _anything_ this long, much less in story format.  The fic—to be cliché, but it's very true—was written for and _by_ the reviews, who gave me ideas and inspiration when my own ran dry.  I am extremely proud of this fic, and consider it to be the best thing I've written and posted yet, though I hope not the last.  I've fallen in love with the characters, and in truth now I feel like we're breaking up.  Like we're saying good-bye, you know?  I'm rather sad, to tell the truth.

Yeah.  Something like that.  This is the real ending, I'm not entirely _satisfied_, I kind of prefer the last chapter to this one, but this is what came out, and I thought it best just to throw it out and see what happens.  It had to end here though.  Sorry.  Just did.

Thank you, and goodnight.  


End file.
